It's your Tern
During May, our busy reserve team placed two new tern rafts on the main lake and saline lagoon at Castle Espie Wetland Centre.
These are specially designed to provide an island habitat for terns, which is both safe from flooding and predation. To encourage nesting success each raft is fitted with a decoy, just to confuse visitors!
Common terns are summer visitors and can be seen in coastal areas across Northern Ireland, particularly Strangford Lough.
Over the past few days, there has been a very active tern spotted on the saline lagoon, showcasing territorial behaviours towards black headed gulls and even attempting to feed its catch to the dummies on the raft!
The same bird has also been seen resting on the raft on the main lake. We're hopeful this will attract more terns into the area and lead to nesting on the rafts.
Thanks to Lesley Barker and Jonathan Clark for the photographs.
