Conservationists find dunlin chicks thriving in boggy habitat created in collaboration with landowners
Deep in the Cumbrian Pennines, walkers might be lucky enough to spot small birds with spindly legs, long beaks and bodies like feathered balls hopping through the peat bogs.
These are endangered dunlins – at risk in England because their favoured soggy landscapes are drained and burned for farming and grouse shooting.
These birds fly an astonishing distance to breed in the far reaches of the heather moorlands in Cumbria, travelling thousands of miles to and from west Africa.
But a new collaboration between conservationists and landowners has resulted in the breeding success of the wading birds. A team from bird conservation charity the RSPB used drones to survey the hard-to-reach areas of the Pennines in the first survey of its kind, which was funded by Natural England.
