Build it and they will come - Katie Prewett summarises what has been an exciting couple of days down on the south coast and catches up with the news from other RSPB nature reserves:
As far as exciting Wednesdays go, this week pretty much tops it. Much to the surprise of RSPB's warden, Peter Hughes, a large shoal of ‘smooth-hound’ sharks were spotted swimming into the shallow intertidal waters at RSPB Medmerry reserve, near the town of Selsey in West Sussex, on Wednesday morning.
If you haven’t yet viewed the amazing footage of our unusual visitors enjoying the waters, you can watch it here. The footage of the sharks was bait for the UK national media, gaining widespread coverage. Although it didn’t stop there – the sharks also made a splash in the media right across the world, even making today’s Sydney Morning Herald.
Needless to say we were all astonished when we saw the footage but it goes to show the variety of wildlife that RSPB reserves attract. The Environment Agency, with RSPB support, carried out a significant amount of work on Medmerry a few years back and now we are really starting to see the benefits to wildlife, and the people living close by.
RSPB Medmerry is the largest open-coast managed realignment scheme ever in the UK – designed to protect over 350 homes in Selsey from coastal flooding. The scheme has been a huge success, both in terms of reducing the flood risk for local people and in terms of wildlife that has moved in, including a pair of black-winged stilts which bred successfully for only the third time in the UK last year – read about it here.
We are confident that the same wildlife success will result from the Wallasea Island Wild Coast project, Europe’s largest man-made nature reserve and another coastal realignment project, located on the Suffolk coast. The project reached a significant milestone last week when the new seal walls of ‘Cell 1’ were successfully breached. You can watch a time-lapse video of the event here.
By 2025, the RSPB’s Wallasea Island Wild Coast Project plans to have created 148 hectares of mudflats, 192 hectares of saltmarsh, and 76 acres of shallow saline lagoons. Around eight miles of coastal walks and cycle routes will allow people to get closer to the island’s spectacular wildlife.
Our triangular finned friends aren’t the only unusual visitors to have been spotted on an RSPB reserve recently. Last Sunday, in a first for Suffolk, observers at RSPB Minsmere caught a rare sighting of a black-browed albatross, usually found in the South Atlantic and only a handful wander north of the equator. Why not try and get down to your local RSPB reserve over the weekend and see if you can spot anymore wonderful wildlife?
If you want a taste of just some of the coverage our fishy friends got, have a look at some of this:
The Independent, Daily Telegraph, The Times, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Huffington Post, BBC News, Sky News, ITV News, The Metro, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian. And not to forget...The Lad Bible