Does this man have Britain’s best job?
telegraph.co.ukalthough most famous for its seals, also has a tern colony of international importance. I have come here to find out what it must be like to do a job like this in a place like that – a place both wild and isolated, with a feeling of remoteness rarely found on the coast of England.
Because of the way it juts out into the sea, Blakeney Point is a migration hotspot for birds. Terns have been breeding here since the early 1800s, when records first began, and 2021 was a bumper year: in all, they counted 3,678 pairs.
Every year, sandwich terns, common terns, little terns and very occasionally an Arctic tern will nest on the dunes of this protected Norfolk coastline, and lately their numbers have gone up to historic levels.
It is Halpin’s duty to protect them, and that’s what keeps him awake at night. Ground-nesting birds, terns are vulnerable to environmental effects that Halpin can’t do anything about, such as bad weather and big tides, and a variety of predators – rats, kestrels, gulls, foxes and tourists – which it is his job to discourage.
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