A golf course became a wetland. Birds moved in first.

A golf course on England's Lincolnshire coast has reopened as a wetland nature reserve, and the birds moved in before the public could. National Trust Sandilands, bought by the Trust in 2020, now holds a new wetland ecosystem stretching across the equivalent of 45 football fields. None of it will ever see pesticide or public water again. Avocets and oystercatchers nested and bred there this year, and little ringed plover chicks were recorded for a second straight year. "Even before the project was officially complete, nature had begun to return," said area ranger Katie Scott. Golf courses are famous for draining water and poisoning bees, which makes the reversal pointed. In Aurora, Colorado, the CommonGround course swapped decorative foliage for native wildflowers and switched to recycled wastewater. Forty bird species were counted there in a single day. US golf covers 2.24 million acres, an area larger than Delaware.