The Dollart is a bay

Bay

A bay is an area of water mostly surrounded by land. Bays generally have calmer waters than the surrounding sea, due to the surrounding land blocking some waves and often reducing winds. Bays also exist as an inlet in a lake or pond. A large bay may be called a gulf, a sea, a sound, or a bight...

 between northern Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 and Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, on the west side of the estuary

Estuary

An estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea....

 of the Ems river. Most of it dries at low tide. Many water birds feed there.

Gaining from and losing to the sea

The Dollart was likely created between 1219 and 1413, by the rising waterlevel and some floods. However, in the beginning that wasn't a real problem. The land was protected by dikes. But in the battle between the schieringers and vetkopers

Vetkopers and Schieringers

The Schieringers and Vetkopers were two opposing Frisian factional parties from the medieval period. They were responsible for a bloody civil war that lasted for over a century and which eventually led to the end of the highly praised "Frisian freedom".These factional parties arose because of an...

, two medieval Frisian parties, some dikes were attacked. Some historians think that those dikes collapsed in 1413 and overflowed the land (Reiderland). In 1520 the Dollart had its largest surface. Between then and the 19th century, the Dollart had partly been re-empoldered

Polder

A polder is a low-lying tract of land enclosed by embankments known as dikes, that forms an artificial hydrological entity, meaning it has no connection with outside water other than through manually-operated devices...

 again.

Nowadays it's a paradise for all kinds of bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s and other animals that live around water. The foundation of protecting and examining the landscape of Groningen

Groningen (province)

Groningen [] is the northeasternmost province of the Netherlands. In the east it borders the German state of Niedersachsen , in the south Drenthe, in the west Friesland and in the north the Wadden Sea...

, Het Groninger Landschap, organizes excursions to the Dollart around three times a year.

Border conflict

The Netherlands and Germany do not agree on the exact course of the border through the bay. The territorial dispute

Territorial dispute

A territorial dispute is a disagreement over the possession/control of land between two or more states or over the possession or control of land by a new state and occupying power after it has conquered the land from a former state no longer currently recognized by the new state.-Context and...

 has gained relevance as there are plans for an offshore wind farm.