As the dust settles on a breathless and action-packed month of July, and the calendar duly ticks over into August, we find ourselves now entering the final, and most enjoyable, chapter of the northern summer. For much of Forvie’s wildlife, the season’s hard work is over and done: plants have flowered and are setting seed, insects are advancing through their rapid life-cycles, most of our birds have fledged their young, and this year’s cohort of tiny juvenile amphibians, freshly-emerged, are on the march. The Reserve and wider world are teeming with new life; this is a time for us to take stock, and to enjoy the fruits of the spring and summer’s labours, while hopefully basking in some late-summer sunshine – if the fates be willing, of course!

Another largely dry and warm week was dominated, as so often here, by a frequent strong breeze from the westerly quarter. Early in the week, this brought with it an acrid smell of smoke from the colossal wildfire which has devastated a large area of the Cairngorms National Park, some sixty miles to the west of us. This was a sobering reminder of the dangers of fire in the natural environment, and with our summers increasingly featuring high temperatures and long periods of drought, it’s an issue that is unlikely to go away.

Here at Forvie, with its dry coastal heathland and grassy dunes, the risk of fire is always at the forefront of our minds these days. Our advice to any would-be visitors is much the same as that given out by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service: don’t light barbeques or camp fires, and be exceptionally careful when disposing of cigarette ends. Please don’t let Forvie feature on the news as the next unfolding disaster.

It was with mixed feelings, then, that we found this disposable barbeque at our Waterside car park in the week. Whoever had left it had clearly tried to do the right thing, and had left it on the concrete slabs by the bins, rather than dumping the hot coals in the bin itself (or worse still, in the undergrowth beyond). But at the present time, with the fire risk in the region remaining exceptionally high, and the emergency services already stretched, why would you even take the risk of lighting one of these things in the countryside? Do us all a favour, and pack some sandwiches for a picnic instead – thereby eliminating the risk altogether. Personally, I love a good bonfire or BBQ as much as anyone – but now really isn’t the time!

We’re lucky at Forvie to have a lot of good neighbours in our local communities of Collieston and Newburgh, with many local residents going out of their way to help maintain and improve their local environment. Among these unsung heroes are some neighbours of ours from the High Town in Collieston, who for many years have done yeoman work in clearing marine litter off the beaches and coves of Forvie’s coast. This leaves the Reserve staff with the relatively minor job of tripping the rubbish down to the collection point in the pickup truck, where it is subsequently uplifted by our counterparts in Aberdeenshire Council. A true team effort, and something that wouldn’t be possible without the community-spirited residents of Collieston and Newburgh – we owe you a debt of gratitude.

Speaking of teamwork, on Monday we teamed up with Robert, Lewis and Nicole from Scottish Invasive Species Initiative for our annual Himalayan Balsam-bashing expedition along the Foveran Burn. We were grateful to Forvie volunteers Vikki, Richard and Jim for their respective contributions, and the company and craic helped to offset the inevitable nettle stings, and the attentions of the biting insects! This year we tackled the task a little earlier than in 2025, and hopefully this will result in less Balsam seed having been set this year. But only time will tell of course!

Summer at Forvie means, among other things, the staging of our annual programme of public events. We’re well through these now, with just a Moth Morning and a Beach Clean left to go. This past week, our evening talk at the Forvie Centre (entitled ‘Fluffy Chicks and Whitewash’, as per last week’s blog!) was well attended, with some excellent, intelligent lines of questioning in the Q&A that followed the talk. At times like these, my wavering faith in humanity is restored somewhat, and I am almost tempted to think that the future of nature conservation might yet be in good hands!

The subject of the talk was the Forvie ternery, and by Thursday, the slide show contained substantially more birds than the actual ternery itself. A real clear-out had taken place since the previous week, with the colony site now assuming a desolate, ghost-town sort of feel. But what a season it’s been – in my twenty summers at Forvie, this year’s results from the ternery would comfortably make it into the top five.

Even the insects down at the ternery are packing it in for the season. This year’s batch of Cinnabar moth caterpillars, stuffed to bursting point with Ragwort leaves, are now perambulating in all directions looking for somewhere to pupate. We’ll not then see them again until late spring in 2027, when they will emerge as newly-minted adult moths.

In the meantime, their chosen Ragwort foodplants have been stripped to the bare bones by the hungry catties, and you’d be hard-pressed to identify the plant from what remains. Only the shrapnel of yellow petals beneath the skeleton of the plant, and the attendant caterpillars themselves, offer any clues as to the stricken plant’s identity.

Another floral feature of the ternery just now is Sea Rocket, which is abundant on the shingle areas at the north end of the enclosure.

The dense growth of Sea Rocket provides useful cover for the few remaining chicks of Arctic and Little Terns, all of which will likely be fledged and gone within a few days of this piece going to press.

On the bird front across the wider Reserve, migrant warblers have been very prominent this past few days. Willow and Sedge Warblers are the most plentiful of the various species that pass through our area in late summer, and most of these will be young birds setting out on their very first southward migration. While watching a svelte little Sedgie bathing at the garden pond, or admiring the lithe agility of the tiny Willow Warblers flycatching in the trees overhead, it’s a marvel to think that these diminutive birds will be crossing the mighty Sahara in a few short weeks’ time.

Ahead of them lies an epic journey, and likewise ahead of us lies arguably the most exciting season of the year for those of us with an interest in migrant birds. Hopefully we’ll have much more on which to report in the coming weeks, as we advance through August – be sure and watch this space!

People who work in nature conservation tend to be stoically pragmatic. Perhaps it’s a symptom of being constantly bombarded with bad news (climate change, habitat destruction, species in decline, and the ongoing demolition of the entire biosphere), and choosing to spend a working life swimming against this proverbial flood tide. Either way, we’re generally not given over to excessive optimism or hyperbole, even when things appear to be going well (though I promise we’re still reasonably good fun over a pint or two). Having said all this, I’m now going to go completely against the grain, and say that in twenty summers at Forvie I can’t ever recall the Reserve looking as good as it has this past week.

This uncharacteristically upbeat assessment comes after another dry and settled summer week, during which we’ve enjoyed some warm temperatures and pleasant sunshine without ever receiving the toasting meted out to our neighbours south of the border. This has been the case for much of the past month, and combined with the occasional splash of rain, has treated us to a magnificent display of wild flowers right across the Reserve. The coast path from Collieston to Rockend, via Hackley Bay, is particularly impressive just now, and sadly the following photos, taken on a sub-standard phone camera, don’t begin to do it justice.

The current smorgasbord of wild flowers is comprised of so many different colours, shapes and textures that it’s impossible to pick a favourite species from the mix. This is much the same situation as being faced with a winter flock of ducks: is the Pintail drake the handsomest, or is it the Teal, or the Wigeon? Or even the humble Mallard? In truth they’re all delightful, but better still when viewed together, forming a rich tapestry of colours. Likewise, the current floral scene on the Reserve is exactly that: a rich tapestry indeed.

So without picking any particular favourite, there follows a selection of species, illustrating just some of the variety on offer at Forvie this week.

Bluebells (and for clarity, that’s the species that English folk call Harebells, and not the woodland spring flower; here in Scotland, the latter is often known by the name Wild Hyacinth) are a typical fixture of late summer and [sorry!] autumn here at Forvie. Usually, and as the name tends to suggest, they are a delicate pale blue, but on the Reserve we often find a white version as well. This particular patch of paradoxical ‘white Bluebells’ was found on the re-routed section of the Heath Trail.

Also along the route of the Heath Trail, the strange and distinctive fruiting stems of Stag’s-horn Club-moss are now in evidence. These form dense stands of lime-green among the lichens and heathers, and as such they stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. Despite its name, this isn’t a true moss, but rather a vascular (i.e. ordinary) plant masquerading as one. Anything to try and confuse us amateur botanists!

A curious fact about this species is that it produces spores (like a moss) rather than seeds (like a vascular plant). When dried, these spores are highly flammable, and can form a dust-explosion when mixed with air. Consequently they were historically used as photographic flash powder, and for special effects in theatrical productions and magic shows (think of the ‘puffft‘ of light and smoke as the poor old rabbit is pulled out of the hat, and you’ve got the picture). Jeez, this blog doesn’t half go off-piste sometimes.

We were visited mid-week by former National Nature Reserves colleague Stewart, who also noted the Club-moss on the heath. While checking it out, he went one better and found three flowering stems of Creeping Lady’s-tresses, a rare orchid and a ‘Forvie tick’ for all the current staffers (and yes, we did go out and ‘twitch’ it). This was a remarkable find indeed: this species is a pinewood specialist, usually associated with old-growth Caledonian pine forest. Here at Forvie we only ever had two (count ’em) Scots Pine trees; one blew over and was lost during Storm Arwen, and the remaining one (now the Lonesome Pine, obviously) is more than half a mile away from the spot where Stewart made his discovery. Go figure.

Our ‘stock’ orchid at Forvie, the Northern Marsh, is more or less finished for the year, with most of the flowers having now gone to seed. These have now been superseded by two other species: the rarer, smaller and more cryptic Frog Orchid, and the showier Heath Spotted Orchid. Neither is nearly as plentiful as their Northern Marsh counterpart, but they do both have a habit of popping up next to the footpaths. Eyes to the ground, and you might strike lucky!

The profusion of flowers just now is accompanied by a similarly rich insect fauna. Among the most obvious of all Forvie’s invertebrates are the Dark Green Fritillary butterflies which can be found throughout the Reserve, with many of them still in freshly-minted condition.

By contrast, this Common Blue looked a bit of a sorry sight, and had likely survived a very close call with a predator of some description.

We didn’t have to look far, either, to spot the likely culprit. This fine male Stonechat was perched atop a nearby willow, on the lookout for another meal on wings. Having narrowly missed out on the Common Blue, he probably wouldn’t have had to wait long for another insect to pass by. This, after all, is the season of plenty on the Reserve.

This summer has been richly rewarding for our waterbirds too, with all Forvie’s key species having enjoyed a bumper breeding season. While the final results are not yet in, the preliminary returns for our Eiders, Black-headed Gulls and four tern species have all been superb. Seeing the estuary heaving with fledglings and ducklings is indescribably uplifting for those of us involved in protecting and monitoring these vulnerable birds. These are scenes and memories to treasure.

Confession time now. I can’t say that summer is my favourite season here (normally, in fact, it wouldn’t make it into my top three). This relentlessly busy time of the year demands a lot of hard work and nervous energy, and it’s usually a relief when it’s all over. But without wishing to hex what remains of the summer of 2026, it’s been a golden season at Forvie. At times, it’s even been quite enjoyable. And coming from a stoically pragmatic, ageing and occasionally grumpy conservationist, that’s high praise indeed.

JFCI. Just Flippin’ Count It! That’s what a lot of early July is for us here on the NNR. We always say that about 1/3 of our job is field biologist, and these are the months when this part of the job comes to the fore. Just 6 weeks ago, we had our first big count, with the black-headed gull nest census and, since then, we have been constantly counting.

The past couple of weeks have been focussing on monitoring fledging success of breeding birds in the ternery. The first to fly are always the black-headed gulls; they do, after all, return first and have laid eggs by mid-April. The first gull chicks fledged on the 7th of June and we know that their numbers will usually peak about a fortnight later. But we have to count them for several days in a row to make sure we do catch the peak number of fledglings. This will be the measure of how well the birds have done this year and can indicate the wider health of the population.

So far, at least, it looks like a good year for black-headed gull breeding success. From 1,471 nests, we know we’ve had a minimum 1,534 fledgers – so more than 1 per nest. We know this is a minimum count, as birds will fledge before and after our peak count – but it’s a consistent way of monitoring these birds year on year.

Next up are the Sandwich terns. This year, we had 891 nests and their peak fledgling should be this week. In fact, I’m going to have to stop writing this for a couple of hours to go and count them……

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……right, that’s me back. Slightly fewer fledglings today than on Tuesday, when we had 719 between the estuary and the colony, which means they could be starting to fly off into the wider world. There’s always a bit of mixed feeling when the birds leave – while the colony seems silent and desolate without the birds, we’re always hugely relieved to see them go.

It’s then usually a toss-up as to which species we’ll be counting next. Will it be the ‘commics’ or will the little terns fledge first? This year, unusually, it’s the little terns that have started to fledge first. We know we have at least 11 fledged so far, with at least another four medium-sized chicks, plus two really dinky ones still running around in the colony. If they all make it to adulthood, we’ll be delighted.

Our next counts will be of common and Arctic tern fledglings. We only had the first of these flying on Monday, so they’ll probably peak late next week sometime. We hope they’ll grow up and fly soon, as the news of another marine heatwave is very worrying. This can affect fish distribution and therefore food availability for the birds. If the food supply fails before the birds fledge, we will see mass starvation of chicks in the colony, and more widely up and down the east coast. A potentially sad result of our rapidly warming planet.

But, to cheer us all up from the thought of all our seabirds dying, here’s some cute duckling pictures. First up, the iconic eider duck. Last count of these revealed 316 well-grown ducklings, so, fingers crossed, it looks like eiders will have a good breeding year

Possibly even cuter, there are 54 shelducklings on the estuary, ranging form small and fluffy to adult sized. This, too, represents a good breeding year for these birds.

Walk through Waterside wood in spring and you’ll likely hear a weird assortment of honks, screeches and bill-clattering coming from above. This is all from the 15 heron nests that make up the Forvie heronry. Thanks to volunteer Richard for counting these!

It’s not just birds we count here, although they do make up the bulk of our survey work. Regular readers of the blog will know we regularly count seals and, for the past couple of years, we’ve been aided in that by PhD researcher Claire. However, she’s coming to the end of her fieldwork as described in her blog here… Aberdeen Marine Mammal Project – News …so it’ll be back to Eyeball Mk 1 plus telescope. And a big thanks to Claire for all the data she’s given us over the past couple of years.

We also have a long-standing butterfly transect on the reserve, which was set up in the late 1970s. This runs between the start of April and the end of September and counts butterflies within a set distance either side of a set route. It has to be done on a fine day and that, as I’m sure you can imagine, is a huge challenge in some years! Butterflies – and moths – are really good indicators of environmental change. We see some species move north as the climate warms (cinnabar moth) but others have disappeared from the reserve (small pearl-bordered fritillary) and we’re not really sure why. Sadly, butterflies and many other insects are generally on the decline, due to changes in land management in the wider countryside.

So, why do we count all these things? It’s not just because we enjoy looking at them, though that is true. It’s for the very simple reason that you have to know what’s there to know how to look after it. Monitoring populations can also let us know about any ‘red flags’ in the wider world – if the birds have had a good season here, why are fewer coming back? What’s happening elsewhere – are they getting killed on migration or starving because food stocks are failing? If butterflies are declining here, are they also declining across the UK? And, if they are, are other insects? And if they’re declining, who is going to pollinate all our food? While we might only ever have a snapshot of what happens on our reserve, the data we gather helps feed into a wider picture of the health of our natural world.

It’s ironic, looking back at this blog, all about counting things – I was rubbish at maths in school. It was my least favourite subject by far. I mean, I could do arithmetic, if you gave me a pencil and paper and some time, but anything involving long division, simultaneous equations or a Greek letter was black magic. I’m still of that opinion 35 years later and think I’ll just stick with basic counting. Speaking of which, it’s almost the weekend (when this is being written, at any rate), so I’m off to count the bubbles in a cold one. See you next week!

The unsettled theme to summer 2026 continued this week, as June segued seamlessly into July. The working week thus comprised several mild and indifferent days, one decent splash of rain (Wednesday), a spell of violent high winds (Thursday) and one proper scorcher (Friday). Unsurprisingly, given our high latitude and coastal location, even the hot days here are mild and gentle when compared with what’s being experienced elsewhere in the UK and Europe this summer, and much to our relief too. We northerners – people and wildlife alike – just aren’t cut out for serious heat.

The warmer days have been excellent, though, for insect action. July is probably the best month of the year at Forvie for Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), and the new month certainly started off in a lively fashion with numerous species on show throughout the week. Unusually, some of them even deigned to pose for the camera for a change, thereby presenting a rare series of opportunities to observe and record them in real detail.

Some species, of course, are more easily identified than others. Local knowledge can help you out massively as well: you know, for instance, that any blue butterfly you see on Forvie is going to be a Common Blue. This makes life considerably easier than in many other places in Europe, where there are multiple similar species all on the wing at the same time. On the chalk downland in southern England, where I learned my butterflies, you also had to rule out Holly Blue, Small Blue, Chalkhill Blue and Adonis Blue for starters. In Europe, flying insect diversity tends to decrease with distance travelled north and west, and here on the Reserve – at 57 degrees north – we’ve just got the one species of blue to worry about. But what a beautiful species it is, as we’re reminded on the rare occasion that one stays still long enough to afford us a decent view!

Common Blue is one of our smaller butterflies, with a wingspan of little more than an inch. Similar in size, but with a very different colour-scheme, is the Small Heath, which can be found in large numbers throughout the Reserve during high summer. Once again, the identification is made straightforward by a lack of similar species in our area; their small size and orange-and-silver colouration are unique in a local context. Like the Common Blue, they are lively and active, and getting close views isn’t always easy – unless you’re lucky enough to happen upon a mating pair, as we did in South Forvie this week.

Ringlet butterflies, so named for the row of golden-ringed ‘eye spots’ on the underside of the hindwings, are a common sight at Forvie in July. They’re most often encountered around the Forvie Centre and along the track to Collieston village, where their larvae feed on various grasses. Their dark-chocolate ground colour and weak, fluttering flight make them easy to identify too.

If you cross paths with a bright orange, fast-flying butterfly on the Reserve in July and August, chances are it’ll be the paradoxically-named Dark Green Fritillary (it’s actually the underside of the wings that are dark green). There are dozens of fritillary species in Europe that all look confusingly similar, but at Forvie we only have two: this one, and the much dinkier Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary. The latter, however, has become very rare here, and may indeed now be locally extinct. So if you see an orange butterfly with black markings here, there’s a 99% chance it’ll be a ‘DGF’.

Not dissimilar in appearance, but with black-and-white wingtips more reminiscent of the famous Monarch butterfly of North America, is the Painted Lady. We’ve been seeing small numbers of these migrant butterflies from the south for several weeks now, and it’s possible that these are the vanguard of a larger immigration to come later in the summer. Like many wildlife spectacles, these periodic invasions are seemingly random and hard to predict. However, we live in hope that we might see the scenes of July and August 2019 repeated, when literally thousands of these attractive insects passed through the Reserve.

Associated with the Painted Lady immigration was this Hummingbird Hawk-moth at Collieston. Another long-distance migrant, these cross the North Sea each summer from their strongholds in southern and central Europe, and this week’s individual was the first we’d crossed paths with this year.

Speaking of moths, and firsts for the year, this rather lovely Angle Shades turned up just outside the office door early in the week. This is a moth more usually associated with the autumn – whisper it quietly now!

Meanwhile, this cryptically-patterned moth was spotted roosting on a post down at Waterside car park, and it wasn’t a species to which I could instantly put a name. A quick bit of research, however, revealed that this species actually has a rather splendid name. Meet the Brussels Lace moth.

Much more straightforward was this mighty Northern Eggar which we discovered along the Dune Trail footpath mid-week. Its large size, delightfully fluffy body and distinctive wing markings rendered it unmistakable, while its magnificent feathery antennae identified this individual as a male.

We don’t often see Northern Eggars as adult moths (apart from the odd one buzzing past at 40 mph), but their caterpillars are a very familiar sight on the heath. What a delight to see the different stages of these beautiful moths’ life cycle during the course of the year.

In addition to the Lepidoptera, it’s been a good week for the more obscure invertebrates too. En-route to the ternery on Monday, I happened upon this chunky-looking beetle just emerging from its subterranean quarters in the dunes.

Closer inspection revealed that the beast in question was a Dune Chafer, a scarce species with a predilection for sandy places. Which makes perfect sense, of course. I too share the Dune Chafer’s love of this sort of habitat: this is a beetle after my own heart.

Other invertebrates are so cryptic or obscure that I am forced to admit defeat. Ichneumon wasps are a case in point. These solitary wasps are important predators of other invertebrates (including various ‘garden pests’), and in the UK alone there are upwards of 2,000 species (compared with just 60-odd butterflies, for example). Identifying them to species requires expertise I can only dream of. Even the word ‘ichneumon’ is difficult to fathom. Consequently, and to my amusement, reserve manager Catriona simply refers to them as ‘icky newmans’ – think I’ll just do the same.

Spending a wee while looking at and photographing all the ‘small things’ on the Reserve this week was a timely reminder of the importance of insects in the natural world. These are the creatures that make the biosphere tick, fulfilling a vast range of roles from pollinators to recyclers, and everything in between. They also form critical links in the food chain, supporting everything from amphibians to insectivorous birds to top predators, not least Homo sapiens. You really can’t say fairer than that.

Of all the threats facing the natural world in the 21st Century, the one that terrifies me most is the collapse of our insect populations. Lose these, and the battle to save nature (and, by definition, humanity too) is also lost. Good reason, then, to sweat the small things: our existence and theirs are inextricably bound together. We might get irritable when being bitten by a Midge, or when a Wasp tries to share your pint, but all these insects are critical cogs in the great machine of life. Spread the word!

It comes as no surprise that starting a new job as Reserve Officer here at Forvie NNR is a big change. But looking back at my first two months, the best way I can summarise this time is being defined by constant, rapid, and exciting change!

This change feels most prominent at the ternery. During my first week we spotted the first black headed gull chick of the season. Now, little tern chicks have hatched and are wandering worrisomely close to the fence, common and arctic tern chicks seem to be multiplying by the day, sandwich terns are strutting and flapping about encouragingly, and black headed gull fledglings have already been spotted way up The Ythan.

As the season progresses, each change brings something new to keep track of – from counting adults, to clutches, to fledglings, and back to adults (but those carrying fish this time!). I had a couple of attempts at completing counts of adult eiders along the estuary and the sea cliffs until their numbers peaked. Then it was swiftly on to counting the numbers of ducklings being led by doting mothers down to the estuary. These observations are all key to understanding population size and breeding success which can be compared across years.

As well as monitoring the birds, there are potential threats to look out for and manage, if possible. Scanning the sand for signs of predators now feels routine. And while out on reserve we chat to people about how remarkable the site is and how to enjoy it without disturbing the breeding birds and other wildlife.

A new observation for this week is counting the number of arctic and common terns that are bringing fish to the colony which helps to indicate if plenty of food is available. As we can’t control all the factors needed for a healthy breeding bird colony, here’s hoping for a good haul of sand eels and sprat this year to feed up the chicks.

A very unique part of the job has been helping the local ringing group ring chicks with identifying markers. Not only is it an amazing experience and skill to learn, but ringing puts the birds at Forvie into a global perspective. The rings allow chicks to be identified in the future, revealing aspects of their awe-inspiring journeys. Recently one of Forvie’s sandwich tern chicks that was ringed in 2000 was spotted again on the Aberdeenshire coast, that’s 26 years of migrating to and from west Africa!

It is a huge privilege to work so close to this internationally important site for breeding terns and gulls and help in some way towards it being a place for them to return for years to come.

Keeping pace with all this novelty and change is challenging but exciting, and each day provides a fresh chance to train the senses, ask questions, and look for answers. Fortunately, I’m in good company, as the Forvie team (staff, volunteers, and friends included) are a wealth of knowledge and support that I have already learnt so much from and am very grateful to! When I catch myself feeling a bit like an awkward fledgling, I count myself lucky I don’t have to learn to fly and migrate across continents in my first few months here…

Although breeding birds are a big focus at this time of year and have ended up being the focus of this blog, there is a lot happening elsewhere on the reserve to keep up with and marvel at too.

Jobs like maintaining the barrier fence and the path structures are a reminder of the forces of nature that constantly shape the coastline and that we simply can’t (and shouldn’t) control everything. Having my work dictated by the whims of the weather and the tide is quite refreshing after having worked in an office for several years previously!

Facing the elements full on are the haul out of grey seals which will be a focus of my work going forward. Right now, you would be forgiven for asking ‘what seals?’. But you can still spot them hanging out at the estuary mouth from Newburgh Beach, just in lower numbers. A group of 220 grey seals were counted this week, so I still have peak numbers of 3000+ to look forward to seeing in the spring.

It was nice to share what I have learnt so far with the Moray Field Club who visited for a field trip last weekend. We enjoyed watching the terns fishing and the six-spotted burnet moths fluttering and feasting during a walk along Waterside.

Finally, as I am speaking of change, I can’t leave out the wildflowers that have been brightening each step throughout the reserve recently. For a time, a different flower seemed to emerge each day, delighting me and the insects a like, and constantly testing my already stretched memory.

As some flowers begin to fade, others bloom, and others (I’m sure) still go unnoticed, I realise that the only constant of working here at Forvie is likely to be change, and that this is no bad thing at all!

For wildlife and Reserve staff alike, the middle week of June typically represents the busiest period of the busiest month of the busiest season here at Forvie. We’re now at the very height of the ‘simmer dim’, that midsummer period when it never gets properly dark even in the dead of night, and as a result each day seems to last a lifetime. It’s an exciting but exhausting phase of the year, with people and wildlife all working long hours, and a distinct urgency about proceedings.

One formidable task that occurs during this period of the month is the annual nest census for our Common and Arctic Terns. These don’t tend to start nesting until mid-to-late May, some three or four weeks later than our Sandwich Terns (and fully six weeks behind our Black-headed Gulls), and correspondingly their nest census has to take place later in the season. As with the other species, we aim to carry out the census at the point when the first chicks are due to hatch, at which time the number of nests containing eggs is at its highest. Ideally this would have been at the end of the previous week, but with the weather having been unhelpfully cool and wet, it was delayed until Monday. And not a moment too soon either, as we shall see later on.

Common and Arctic Terns are very closely related, and consequently similar in appearance; even experienced observers can struggle to tell them apart at times. As a result, you’ll sometimes hear birders using the term ‘Commic Tern’ to describe an ‘either/or’ individual, or a mixed flock of the two species. Given a decent view, though, the adult birds are readily separable. Common Tern is the larger of the two species, and is heavier-set than Arctic, with broader wings and a larger head and bill. The tail is shorter too, and the overall appearance slightly gull-like. The wings, seen from below, are dusky grey with a diffuse dark trailing edge, and the orange-red bill has a black tip. Follow me so far? There’ll just be a short test at the end of term…

Arctic Tern, by contrast, is slightly smaller and more lightweight, and consequently rather more elegant, with rakishly slender wings and long tail. The head and bill are smaller than in Common Tern, and along with the longer rear end this makes the wings appear to be set well forward. Seen from below, the wings are beautifully translucent, with a neat black trailing edge, and the bill is a deep crimson, usually lacking in a black tip. Simple, huh?

While I’m not very keen on the modern fashion for making up composite words (such as ‘Brexit’ – ugh), I’m ashamed to admit that ‘Commic’ is one that we do use freely on the Reserve. Indeed, that’s exactly what we do with the nest census: the eggs of the two species overlap a great deal in appearance, so it’s easier to deal with them collectively rather than trying to assign each nest we find to one species or the other. And while I’m also not very keen on slapdash convenience over thoroughness and scientific rigour, we also have to factor in the need to census several hundred nests in a short time. As always in our work, the welfare of the wildlife is the top priority, and in this case we must work quickly in order to keep the birds off their nests for the minimal time possible. So, the ‘Commic’ census it is then!

The tactics are similar to those we use for the Black-headed Gull nest census earlier in the season, in terms of covering the ground as thoroughly as possible, and using copious amounts of flour to mark progress.

The terns’ nests themselves can be quite tricky to find at times. It’s easy enough when they’re nesting on open ground, but many of them settle among dense vegetation, which makes life very awkward in terms of access and visibility. Added to that, the eggs themselves are small, and often beautifully camouflaged too. There’s no doubt that despite our being as thorough as possible, some of them will inevitably get missed. But hopefully not too many!

The slightly delayed timing of the census also made life a great deal more difficult than it might have been. A substantial number of nests already contained newly-hatched chicks, and worse still, some contained no chicks at all, with the hatchlings having already gone walkabout. Common and Arctic Tern chicks are active and mobile as soon as they have hatched and dried out, and they can wander a considerable distance from the nest in a short time. This makes them hard to spot, creating a double-edged problem: you may miss a nest entirely, and worse still, you run the risk of treading on the hidden chicks. Again, the dense vegetation gives them plenty of places to hide, and thus every footstep must be taken with the utmost care.

Some of the individual nests are remarkably beautiful; among my favourites were those occupying little hollows among the yellow buds of Biting Stonecrop, a low-growing hardy plant which thrives in the dry and salty dune slacks.

As well as a wide variation in the choice of nesting site, there is also a huge amount of variety in the appearance of the eggs themselves. On a couple of occasions I found nests containing eggs so different in appearance, you’d think they’d been laid by two different species. But this is apparently not that unusual, especially in Arctic Terns, whose eggs are especially varied in colour and markings.

As with all our monitoring work at the ternery, the most rewarding bit of the day is when you extricate yourself from the colony, and watch the parent birds immediately return to their eggs and chicks. The sense of relief at this point – relief at having got the job done, and moreover relief at having negotiated the colony without treading on any eggs or chicks – is a precious feeling. Commic relief indeed.

After a very long day’s hard yakka, the final score stood at 724 nests. This represents a welcome increase of 103 on last year’s total, following several consecutive annual declines – and once again, a relief to know that our regionally-important population of these struggling seabirds appears to be holding its own this year.

In fact, a long working day was made to feel even longer by the constant abuse – both verbal and physical – meted out by the birds. Having been forcefully struck on the head literally hundreds of times during the census, I must admit to feeling a little light-headed by the end of the job. Arctic and Common Terns are super-committed parents, and their actions in defence of their young are admirable. I just wish I was able to tell them that I meant no harm, so they could save their energy for the real predators!

And then there’s the ‘whitewash’… my poor old bushman’s hat will sadly never be the same again. But it did at least keep the recycled fish paste out of my eyes, as well as saving my scalp from serious laceration from the birds’ needle-sharp bills. Personal protective equipment is essential in this job!

With that job mercifully done, our nest-census work for the 2026 season is now complete – much to our collective relief. Until next year…

This week’s alliterative title is a neat summary of the past seven days on the Reserve, a capricious early-summer week where you really didn’t know whether to slap on the sunblock or get happit up in your waterproofs. In the event, most days required both of these at different times, and it was all too easy to either get soaked having dressed for the sun, or boiled-in-the-bag having dressed for the rain. No matter though: with June being our busiest month of the year at Forvie, there’s work to be done come rain or shine (or indeed both). And this week, that work included the annual cliff-nesting seabird census from Collieston south to Rockend.

Seabirds have been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons in recent years. Many species have suffered long-term declines, with a warming climate and rising sea temperatures disrupting the food chain. Other threats are constantly looming on the horizon too: marine litter and microplastics, oil pollution, fishery bycatch and offshore energy developments to name but a few. On top of all this, there was the recent horror-show of avian ‘flu (we’re still trying to blot out the memories of 2022 and 2023 at Forvie), followed by the disastrous autumn storm season in 2023 that caused further heavy mortality. Then, as if all that wasn’t enough, there was the collapse of the food supply following a marine heatwave in 2024. It never rains and all that.

Thus working with seabirds these days is a bit like following an unfancied football team through a league season (or indeed a World Cup): you hope for the best, but at the same time fear the worst.

It was a pleasant surprise, therefore, that this year’s results weren’t all doom and gloom. Kittiwakes, for example, seem to be having a resurgence here: the 685 breeding pairs we recorded on census represented the highest total here since 1997 (amusingly, summer warden Joe wasn’t even born then). Kittiwakes are lively, attractive and endearing birds, and it was hard to watch so many succumb to the dreaded ‘flu in 2023. So it was a relief to see the cliffs so busy with them, and to hear the stacks and inlets echoing with their evocative calls.

Our two auk species, Guillemot and Razorbill, also appear to be bouncing back from the setbacks of the past few years. Forvie is home to small and relatively recently-established colonies of each, and both species had increased in numbers since the previous census in 2025.

Not all of our seabirds are faring so well, however. We found only 35 Fulmars occupying nest-sites along the cliffs this year, the lowest number recorded here since surveying began in the 1990s. By way of context, in 2007 – my first summer at Forvie – there were nearly 200 occupied nest-sites along the same stretch of coast. A decline of 80-odd per cent in twenty years represents quite some fall from grace, and the reasons remain unclear.

One of the biggest issues known to face Fulmars is plastic waste in the marine environment, and this is one possible cause for the population crash here. Fulmars often ingest floating plastics, particularly polythene scraps and plastic bags, which on the face of it sounds strange – why would you do that?! However, Fulmars navigate and find food by an acute sense of smell, and are attracted by the scent of the algae that settle on the plastic when it’s been in the sea for any length of time. This makes the plastic smell like their natural food, and down the hatch it goes – but it can’t be digested, and eventually the bird effectively dies of starvation despite having a full stomach. What’s more, the chemicals released by the degrading plastic also affect the birds’ hormonal system, leading to further health problems and breeding failure. This is why we get so irritable every time we find one of those helium balloons on the Reserve – plastic in the environment is a real killer.

When we started the seabird census, warm sunshine was the order of the day, and the North Sea was so becalmed that you could – unusually – see the sand-bars beneath the water’s surface. Usually the water is too turbid (cloudy), and the surface too ruffled, to see the seabed below, so this was a rare insight into the offshore topography.

By the conclusion of matters, though, the rain had once again closed in on us, and there was even the odd rumble of thunder to the inland side of the Reserve. Consequently the walk back to the office was undertaken rather briskly…

…but not briskly enough to spare Catriona, Emma and myself yet another summer soaking.

Away from the cliffs, of course, Forvie’s main seabird action happens down at the ternery. Here, our terns and gulls are working hard to raise their young in the face of the usual suite of pressures, not least the weather. Perhaps due to the persistently cold spring we experienced this year, our Sandwich Terns are having an unusually asynchronous season. Normally, they do everything in almost perfect synchrony: they all lay eggs at much the same time, they hatch together, they fledge together, and they all depart together. But this year, we’ve got some pairs still on eggs or brooding tiny fluff-ball chicks, while others are attending well-grown youngsters just a few days away from fledging.

Some of our Black-headed Gulls are still further advanced, and the first fledglings are now on the wing and dispersing to all four corners of the Reserve. From this point onwards, we’ll take every opportunity to census them in order to calculate the productivity of the colony come the end of the season.

Among the throngs of Black-headed Gulls, the really keen observer may occasionally pick out other species attempting to go incognito. Recently these have included a handful of Little Gulls, the smallest gull species in the world; these dinky birds are true lightweights, barely half the size of a Black-headed Gull.

One for the purists was this Bonaparte’s Gull, a vagrant species which is essentially the North American version of our own Black-headed Gull. Smaller and daintier than our Black-headers, and with white underwings instead of the dark shown by Black-headed Gull, this was a tricky one to pick out even for dedicated bird-nerds Catriona and I. But we love a challenge of course!

Much easier to spot was this uniquely freaky Herring Gull on the beach, which exhibited complete leucism (i.e. a lack of any pigment in the plumage). This isn’t the same as albinism, as the legs, bill and eyes were the ‘normal’ colour you’d expect for Herring Gull, not pink as you’d expect in a true albino. But never mind the technicalities – what a cracking looking beast it was!

Interestingly this was the fourth occasion in just over twelve months that I’d seen a bird matching this description – the other three sightings having been at Loch Leven, Peterhead and Lossiemouth. With the locations being widely spaced, it’s long odds for all the sightings to have involved the same individual, but it’s impossible to say for sure.

In any case, it capped off a fine week of seabird action – and well worth the soakings too!

Having put the commentator’s curse on things last week with an unguarded comment about the impending ‘long hot summer’, it was inevitable that the first week of the new season would be defiantly dull and dreich. Early in the week, the dreaded haar reduced the visibility to near zero for a time, which is helpful when you’re attempting to carry out some survey work on the estuary. Instead of ‘gorillas in the mist’, it was more like ‘ducks in the haar’, as we tried to decide which of the mist-shrouded shapes on the foreshore were Eiders, and which ones were actually just lumps of driftwood and other flotsam and jetsam. But sometimes you have to just admit defeat to the weather, and try again whenever the haar clears awa’.

While the early part of the week was dreich and damp, and sufficiently wet to disrupt some of our work on the Reserve, we didn’t actually receive any really useful rainfall until Thursday afternoon. I say ‘useful’, as the spring of 2026 turned out to be a very dry one in our area, and we were getting to the point of needing some rain to damp down the dust-dry landscape, and lessen the risk of wildfire (a constant worry for us these days). But following a fine enough morning on Thursday, the sky turned ‘apocalypse black’, and a real downpour was unleashed. Long hot summer, eh!

Along the line of the barrier fence (the beach end of which – quelle surprise – required yet more repairs this week), a magnificent display of Northern Marsh Orchids is now in evidence. Surely among the loveliest of all Forvie’s wild flowers, these favour the seasonally-wet areas bordering the footpaths, where they grow either singly or in loose colonies. In addition to the barrier fence stretch of the Dune Trail, the other real hotspot for them is the path alongside the Sand Loch. Their flowering season is relatively brief, so enjoy them while you can!

The sharp-eyed observer may also find the paler and more delicate Heath Spotted Orchid among the purple battalions of Northern Marsh Orchids. As well as the colour and form of the flowers, the other obvious point of difference – as the name suggests – is the dark spotting on the leaves (by contrast, the leaves of Northern Marsh Orchid are usually plain). On rare occasions, hybrids between the two species can be found; as well as sharing characteristics of both ‘parent’ species, they also tend to be freakishly tall.

Also found alongside the footpaths is the strange, hemi-parasitic Lousewort, whose roots tap into those of the neighbouring grasses in order to steal some of their nutrients. This strategy is shared by Yellow Rattle, the plant that was infuriatingly hard to find last week when we were putting the wildflower boxes out. While making a living from larceny may seem a bit distasteful, these plants actually help out a lot of other wild flowers by reducing the dominance of grasses, thereby allowing more delicate species to flourish alongside them.

The cheery yellow flowers of Tormentil are at their peak just now; this is another plant which thrives on the margins of the footpaths. The Heath Trail in North Forvie is the easiest place to find it: indeed, with Tormentil being such a characteristic plant of the heathland environment, its four-petalled flower was chosen as the symbol of the Heath Trail on our signs and waymarkers.

In an echo of last week’s instalment, I was personally visited again by another hoverfly species this week. These aren’t easy to identify for the layman (or indeed the generalist nature-reserve warden), but I think it may be Eupeodes luniger – a species which doesn’t seem to have a common (i.e. English) name. If I’m right (and I’m happy to stand corrected by any readers who know better; if that’s you, then please get in touch!), this is a common and widespread migratory species. And apologies, by the way, for the gruesome close-up of the back of my hand.

Rather easier to identify was this impressive moth that we recently crossed paths with in North Forvie. As well as coming in an almost infinite variety of shapes, sizes and colours, moths are also noted for their remarkable names, ranging from the highly descriptive (e.g. Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing) to the downright bizarre (such as the Drinker, the Non-conformist and the Confused – and no, I’m not making these up, or describing myself either). So in typical fashion, this particular beast goes by the name of the Shark.

The name derives, I think, from the projection above the moth’s head, which is supposed to resemble the snout of a Great White Shark when viewed in profile. This does require a fair leap of the imagination, especially in this individual whose ‘snout’ appeared a little bit crumpled. No matter though, I can still say I’ve seen a Shark at Forvie.

This week’s damp weather wouldn’t have been especially helpful for flying insects, or indeed for nesting birds. If exposed to the rain, fluffy chicks can soon become waterlogged and may die from exposure. For this reason, we’ve been staying well clear of the breeding birds at the ternery this week, carrying out only the routine daily fence checks and a bit of remote observation with the telescope. Early June is normally when we start ringing our Sandwich Tern chicks, but this week was written off due to the unsuitable weather; as with all our fieldwork, the welfare of the wildlife must always come first.

No such problems for the Sand Loch Mute Swan family; the cygnets’ waterproof down keeps them warm and dry whatever the weather. As of this week, all five cygnets were still on the go – and a good job too. The swans’ lives essentially become a real-life soap-opera for the residents of neighbouring Collieston, and they form a high proportion of our enquiries each summer, to the point that I’ve considered changing the office answer-machine message (“To enquire about the swans, press 1…”). Hopefully all five cygnets will survive to fledge, or I suspect there’ll be a full public inquiry and three days of national mourning. Keep your fingers crossed.

Another frequent source of enquiries recently has been a dead Roe Deer found just off the Heath Trail. Despite our worst fears about a dog attack (this has happened a number of times in the past at Forvie), it seemed that this dead buck had no obvious injuries. Interestingly, the previous week I had seen two bucks furiously chasing each other around North Forvie, in what was clearly a battle for supremacy ahead of the summer rut. Moreover, Roe Deer are known to die from an excess of lactic acid in the body caused by intense stress – so it appears that this poor old buck had simply been harassed to death by his rival.

The victor, meanwhile, was still present in the area this week, presumably now with all the ladies to himself. An illustration, then, of the harsh realities of the natural world – it’s not all just flowers and fluffy chicks!

So that’s the first week of summer gone by in a haze – at times literally! See you again next week.

By the time this blog goes out for public consumption, there’ll be but a few short hours of meteorological spring remaining. Tomorrow, being the first day of June, represents the first official day of summer: the non-stop season of relentless action and endless daylight. For the next couple of months on the Reserve, we won’t see the stars in the night sky, nor feel our feet touch the ground. The height of the crazy season is now upon us.

In addition to the well-known joys of screaming seabirds, sleepless nights and general delirium, summer at Forvie also means wildflower season. Consequently, at the end of last week we deployed our ever-popular wildflower information boxes across the Heath Trail in the north of the Reserve. With the help of volunteers Elaine and Richard, as well as our trusty, rusty pickup truck, the boxes were duly distributed around the trail, where they will stay until the flowering plants have finished doing their thing.

When deciding where to locate the boxes, we try to find a nice prominent patch of the plant featured on each box, which in some cases is easier said than done! Indeed, this time around we found ourselves having to hunt especially hard for some of the flowers in question. The cold weather earlier in the spring has made for a slow start for many of our wildflowers this year; many are only just coming into bloom now, while others are yet to emerge at all.

Yellow Rattle was one species that proved extraordinarily difficult to pin down. After a good deal of searching in some usually-reliable areas, we failed to find a single plant. In the end, we opted to leave the box in question in an area where we know Yellow Rattle grows, and hope to goodness that it pops up there in due course. Otherwise, and not for the first time in my working life (nor probably the last), I’m going to be left looking like a right idiot.

Other featured species, meanwhile, are well through their growing season. Creeping Willow, for instance, has already begun to set seed, and masses of its cotton-wool-like seeds can often be found alongside the footpaths. Here they wait for the wind to pick up and carry them to a new location; here at Forvie they generally don’t have long to wait.

All that grubbing-around at ground level looking for plants is also great for finding and observing invertebrates too. Some of the larger ones, in fact, are difficult to miss; this whopping Northern Eggar moth caterpillar was a case in point. As long and as thick as your finger, and as fluffy as a blow-dried Samoyed, these are one of the biggest caterpillars you’ll find here at Forvie.

While the Northern Eggars are still at the larval stage, other moths are further advanced through their respective life-cycles. On the heath this week we found the empty cocoon of an Emperor Moth, with the adult moth having long since emerged and departed.

While the cocoon is nothing much to behold, the adult moth – if you’re ever lucky enough to see one – is a magnificent beast. They’re actually not that uncommon, and often fly by day, though we usually only see them bombing past us at 40mph in the inevitable Forvie gale. It’s a rare treat indeed to find one settled among the heather. But once, just once, we caught one in our light-trap at Collieston. A resplendent freshly-minted female, I couldn’t believe my luck when I opened up the trap, and there she was. I felt like I’d won the lottery.

Having taken up moth-trapping on an ad-hoc basis this last couple of years, I’m finally starting to get to grips with the identification of these fascinating insects. But there are plenty of other types of invertebrates that I’m still almost completely ignorant about; I’ve often said that being a naturalist gives you a healthy sense of perspective in terms of your own ignorance. You won’t meet too many ‘know-it-alls’ in this game, as we’re all acutely aware of how much we don’t know.

With this in mind, I’ve tried to expand my knowledge into some of the other insect taxa, one example being bumblebees. Following the usual baby-steps at the outset, I am now confident with identifying the ‘Big Seven’ – the seven commonest and most widespread bumblebee species in the UK, all of which occur here at Forvie. But this week I was delighted to find this little fellow on the heath, who didn’t quite fit any of the species with which I was now familiar. A bit of research ex post facto then appeared to confirm my first suspicion, and here indeed was a different species. I give you the Heath Bumblebee – along with the usual apology for the quality of the photo.

Sometimes in this job, the wildlife comes to you, and this was the case mid-week when this Marmalade Hoverfly landed on my notebook, presumably checking my record-keeping was up to scratch.

This common species is rather beautiful when seen close-up. On this occasion – and it’ll probably never happen again – my usually-lamentably-useless smartphone generously (and uncharacteristically) decided to actually focus on the object I was trying to photograph for once. Miracles apparently do happen.

Marmalade Hoverfly numbers in Scotland are massively supplemented by immigration from the south-east when favourable weather allows them to cross the North Sea. Likewise, Painted Lady butterflies are long-distance migrants, and we’ve been surprised to see a few on the wing at Forvie lately. In what’s been a dismal spring for bird migration, these immigrant insects are a breath of fresh air.

Speaking of birds, it’s all go down at the gullery, where our Black-headed Gull chicks are now getting past the ‘cute, golden and fluffy’ stage, and entering the ‘gawky, scruffy teenager’ phase. Given the chance, the first ones could be on the wing within a couple of weeks – fingers crossed.

And on the subject of growing up fast, we recently received a couple of lovely photos of Forvie-bred Sandwich Terns at large in the wider world, courtesy of our friends at the Grampian Ringing Group. The first was a youngster hatched in 2025, currently residing on its wintering grounds in South Africa. Sandwich Terns don’t breed in their first year – so no point in making the huge trek to Europe when you can just stay put in the African sunshine!

The second, meanwhile, was much nearer to home, having been photographed at Girdle Ness in Aberdeen. Sharp-eyed readers may spot the colour ring combination on the bird’s right leg: green over red, with both colours severely faded with age. That’s because this bird was ringed at Forvie in 2000, and at 26 years old is still going strong. And that’s a lot of return trips to South Africa!

That’s about all for this week folks, so we’ll see you again next time, a week into the long hot summer of 2026. Well, I live in hope…