Woodland

There are still one or two patches of woodland that may be quite close to the Oak, Ash, Willows, Alder, Hazel and Elm woodlands that developed after the Ice age. Good examples are Skillins Wood near Greyabbey and the old oak wood on Rainey Island near Whiterock with its Long-eared Owls.

  

Most pockets of woodland round today's lough , increasingly frequented by Buzzards, are on estates like Castle Ward, Delamont, Finnebrogue, the Nugent Woods at Portaferry, and Mount Stewart, and are all products of planting schemes undertaken in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.