Bizarre antic of spaniel at East Coast nesting habitat favoured by Little Terns and other shoreline birds

Steve Rowland - expert on shorebird habitat creation

AN extraordinary act of vandalism has been reported from a shorebird nesting site in North Norfolk.

According to  long-time RSPB staffer Steve Rowland, an off-the-lead spaniel snatched into its jaws a monitoring camera from a beach favoured by Little Terns and Ringed Plovers.

The dog then took the device  to its owner who promptly threw the camera into the sea.

According to Steve, the dog may have been trained to make the seizure.

The bizarre and unwelcome incident was described when  Steve,  the RSPB's area manager for Norfolk and South Lincolnshire, gave a talk on Monday to the society's Grimsby Group.

He went on to describe some of the other issues encountered  by beach wardens, most of whom are voluntary.

On one occasion, a volunteer went to the aid of a distressed soul who seemed to have been contemplating suicide.

In a earlier, unrelated incident, a body was washed up on the beach.

The wider subject of Steve's talk was the importance of British coastal beaches as a feeding and resting migration corridor for Arctic-nesting shorebirds heading south, some -such as Sanderling - to the southern most part of South Africa.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the evening was his description of the project which, via barge, lead to Crossrail offloading millions of tonnes of spoil from their Queen Elizabeth underground line excavations to Wallasea island off the Essex coast for creation of a shorebird-rich wetland reserve.

Such has been the success of this initiative and others elsewhere on the British coast that Steve has regularly hosted fact-finding visits by  conservationists from South Korea, Belgium, Germany and elsewhere.                                       

Spoonbills are among the long-legged birds now regularly seen on Wallasea Island