Big gains for little terns: how Lindisfarne reserve is helping a rare bird survive tourism

Seasonal wardens and netted fences are helping protect the rare ground-nesting birds that arrive each spring on the UK’s shores On Ross Sands in Northumberland, a little tern has caught sight of a group of people and is sprinting across the beach. “It wants us to follow it,” says Andrew Craggs, senior manager at Lindisfarne national nature reserve. “It’s a diversionary thing – it’s got a scrape and it wants to take us away because it thinks we’re predators.” Craggs is no predator, and he’s not after the scrape – a small pit the ground-nesting bird has dug into the sand to lay its eggs. He is a guardian of these little birds, as well as more than 3,500 hectares (8,600 acres) of sand dunes, saltmarsh and mudflats that make up this tranquil nature reserve perched on the tip of England’s north-east coast. Terns, as well as the ringed plovers that nest on these shores, need protecting. According to the British Trust for Ornithology’s Seabird Monitoring Project, the UK’s little tern breeding abundance – the number of birds returning to breed each year – dropped 19% between 1986 and 2024. Arctic terns were down 25% over the same period, and the number of common terns plummeted 63%. Lindis