Little terns are the smallest seabird that nests in Britain, a bird you could hold in one hand, and they lay their eggs straight onto the sand a few metres above the tide line. That is why Long Nanny, a stretch of dunes between Beadnell and High Newton on the Northumberland coast, is roped off every summer and watched around the clock by National Trust rangers and volunteers who live on site in a hut. This year the watch paid off. At least 126 pairs of little terns nested at Long Nanny, smashing the site record of 57 pairs that had stood since 1994, and at least 82 chicks took to the air, with the final count expected to pass 100. Beside them, more than 730 pairs of Arctic terns laid 1,346 eggs, keeping Long Nanny the largest mainland colony of that bird in the United Kingdom, and Nigella, an American black tern who has somehow crossed the Atlantic to summer here every year since 2020, returned for her seventh season.

Read the full story: Hope for Britain's terns as key colonies show signs of recovery, National Trust.

"To more than double the previous site record for breeding pairs is a remarkable achievement and a testament to dedication," said James Porteus, the Trust's lead ranger for the Northumberland coast. In Norfolk the news was as good. Sandwich terns had skipped Blakeney Point for two summers; this year 1,164 pairs came back to nest on the shingle spit, with common and Arctic terns up too, under the eye of area ranger Edward Stubbings. None of it is luck. Fenced nests, quiet zones kept clear of walkers and dogs in the nesting months, refuges built where chicks can shelter, and people on the beach at three in the morning are what turn a strip of sand into a nursery. Not every colony had a bumper year, and the rangers say the work simply continues. But on two English beaches this summer the terns voted with their wings, and the count is the highest anyone at Long Nanny has ever written down.

Our short take: the full story is from the National Trust's announcement (30 September 2026).