'I'm here to protect the wildlife': Rangers move to remote lifeboat house to monitor rare seabirds

National Trust rangers have moved into a remote lifeboat house to monitor a colony of one of the UK’s rarest seabirds through the breeding season. ITV News' Chloe Keedy paid them a visit.

National Trust ranger Duncan Halpin has literally moved into his office.

Luckily, his office sits on the beautiful Blakeney Point in north Norfolk - a wild spit of land that can only be accessed by car when the tide is at its lowest.

Surrounded by sand dunes, shingle, sea and an abundance of rare wildlife, Duncan and two other rangers have made their home in an old lifeboat house. They won’t leave until summer is over, and the nesting birds and their babies have all flown away.

They are here because Blakeney Point is a crucial breeding site for two endangered species of tern - the little tern and the sandwich tern.

The little tern is one of the UK’s rarest seabirds, and its population has declined by almost 40% since the 1980s.

Around a fifth of the remaining birds choose to breed at Blakeney Point, and trying to keep them and their babies safe is a round the clock job.

"I'm here to protect to protect the wildlife," Duncan said.

"It's incredibly important for some quite sensitive wildlife and it's really important that there is someone here."

After a long voyage from the west coast of Africa, the terns will begin to arrive on the coast of north Norfolk in the next couple of weeks.

"Sandwich terns tend to nest further up the beach, close to the sand dunes," Duncan explains, "but little terns like to nest at the high water mark out on the beach, amongst the pebbles."

This puts them at risk not just from people but from predators too. There are rat traps surrounding the breeding site and Duncan has put up an electric fence to try and keep the foxes out.

"Foxes will eat eggs and birds as well," he tells me. "Foxes onsite will cause a colony to completely abandon." He has a theory that this may be what happened last year. In 2021, more than 3,000 pairs of sandwich terns bred at Blakeney Point.

Astonishingly, last year, that number shrank to just one pair.

Keeping predators at bay is a job that takes "all day, every day".

The rangers have come up with some clever tricks, including scattering strategically-placed plastic decoys where they hope the sandwich terns will breed.

The decoys are designed to look like black headed gulls, and the idea is that the fake ones will attract real ones to land. Where black headed gulls go, sandwich terns tend to follow, because the gulls give them protection.

For now, Duncan and his colleagues are waiting and preparing for the birds to arrive, with mostly each other for company.

So are they sick of each other yet? They’re not, he is quick to reply, "but there’s still time!", he adds with a wry smile.

He points out that there is lots of space out in the rugged wilds of Blakeney Point, some of which they hope will soon be taken up by nesting terns.

The reserve is also open to visitors. Duncan’s somewhat daunting mission is to keep one of the UK’s rarest seabirds on the list of things they can at least hope to spot.

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