Northern Ireland is a great place for wintering waders but the same can no longer be said for its breeding species. There are far too few places left in which Curlew bubble and Snipe drum.
Waders provide some of the best birdwatching spectacles in Northern Ireland, as flocks swirl around coastal estuaries, when the tide rises on a winter’s day. Birds fly in from as far away as Canada and Russia but there are particularly strong links to Iceland, about which there will be more later. Every year, winter counts by volunteers, who help with the Wetland Bird Survey, alert us to the ups and down in wintering populations on loughs and estuaries. Unfortunately, we know much less about breeding species such as Lapwing, Redshank, Snipe and Curlew – four species that feature in a new Northern Ireland survey in the summer of 2019. Although the annual Breeding Bird…
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