Good tern from wildlife enthusiasts

http://www.waterscape.com/features-and-articles/news/3015/good-tern-from-wildlife-enthusiasts

British Waterways has teamed up with a local wildlife group near Solihull to improve facilities for visiting terns on Earlswood Lakes.

A British Waterways ecologist will work alongside Earlswood Wildlife Partnership to install a tern raft at Terry Pool on Monday 14 March. The location may be just a thirty-minute drive from a major Midlands city, but it’s also popular with a variety of wildlife, including common terns, which spend the summer in Africa and come to the UK to breed each April. Although seabirds, terns often venture inland to build their nests on islands safe from predators and tern rafts provide an ideal artificial breeding habitat.

Earlswood Wildlife Partnership identified the requirement for a tern raft after several seasons of common terns visiting the Earlswood lakes but not having anywhere to nest. The partnership has worked hard on the island and this is just part of a wider project, with the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust securing £13,800 from the Nineveh Charitable Trust for work including creating a bat monitoring scheme and installing bird boxes.

Important wetland area

The lakes are an important wetland area home to a wide range of bird life and waterfowl, something British Waterways ecologist Paul Wilkinson, who will be helping on the day, is keen to maintain.

Paul said: “Earlswood Wildlife Partnership has done great work to enhance the appeal of Earlswood Lakes for wildlife and this is a great community project demonstrating what groups of enthusiastic people can achieve. Common terns are very specific regarding their nesting sites, preferring bare areas that have no disturbance from people and are isolated from land predators such as foxes and stoats. Hopefully this project can encourage a pair of terns to stay and rear a family.”