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…

This week’s title, far from being an exaggeration, was basically what greeted the four intrepid observers who ventured into Forvie’s Sandwich Tern colony last Wednesday, for one of the big milestones in the Reserve’s year. With three weeks having elapsed since the appearance of the first Sandwich Tern eggs, it was time to undertake the whole-colony nest census, which is not a job for either the faint-hearted or the well-dressed. After all, neither the terns nor their Black-headed Gull neighbours are inclined to welcome intruders into their world, and make their displeasure quite clear by liberal applications of verbal abuse and recycled fish. But you certainly can’t complain that it’s a boring job.

The nest census is relatively straightforward, with the Sandwich Tern colony occupying a small area of open ground within the larger Black-headed Gull colony. To aid navigation, and thus ensure a 100% accurate count, we use a harmless blue dye to divide the colony into sub-sections. Thankfully, the resultant psychedelic crazy-paving effect soon fades away with the action of sunlight and rain. Then all that remains to be done is to wash the ‘whitewash’ out of our clothes and hair, and everything’s back to normal once again.

Following the recent discovery of a rubber duck in the gullery, which we speculated might have been brought back by a parent bird to keep its chicks amused, this week produced another curious find. This cork from a bottle of sparkling wine appeared along the fence line on Friday morning, and can only have been brought in by one of the gulls (it certainly wasn’t left by the Reserve staff, as we don’t drink on duty, and even if we did, we’d probably all choose a pint over a flute of Cava in any case).

We’ve remarked before about the summer season being stressful for both Reserve staff and wildlife alike, and consequently everyone has to have their own coping mechanism for those times when it all gets a bit much. But I must admit to being surprised that our Black-headed Gulls are now apparently hitting the booze in order to get them through. Needs must and all that – who am I to judge?

Occasionally when I’m out and about on the Reserve, I’ll get stopped for a chat by folk who read this blog, which is always good fun and often provides me with some useful feedback too. One such recent conversation concerned those dreadful ‘spot the bird’ photos I sometimes put up, comprising a perfect blend of nature’s best camouflage and humankind’s worst photographic skills. Seeing as these are apparently quite a popular fixture, why not test your skills, eyesight, screen resolution and patience with this one, which I lovingly prepared on Friday morning.

This week, the beach barrier fence continued its proud record in 2026 of needing repair work every single week of the season (and often two or three times a week during the worst spells of windy weather). Sure enough, after Joe and Emma had mended the fence last weekend, it was wrecked again on Monday night, and I subsequently had to carry out further heavy repairs on Tuesday and again on Friday – by which time my sense of humour was wearing a little thin. Still, on the plus side, I’m acquiring a physique that the late great Chuck Norris would have been proud of, what with all that digging, hauling and sledge-hammering. Well, maybe not quite yet – but with three months of the season left to go, I’ll either be super fit or a total physical wreckage by the time the fences are taken down.

In the north of the Reserve, away from the whitewash and screaming mayhem of the bird colonies, things are somewhat more peaceful. A welcome increase in temperatures this week brought about a large emergence of St Mark’s Flies, which, as I’m always at pains to point out, are nothing to do with St Mark’s trousers.

These splendid insects are harmless to us, and contrary to popular belief they don’t bite or sting. The worst they’ll ever do is clumsily fly into you as you’re walking the trails, as they’re not the most agile fliers. Mostly they bumble along slowly, legs trailing, and tend to congregate in areas where nectar-rich flowers (such as the Sweet Cicely in the photo above) are available. And being abundant as well as slow, they’re on the menu for everything, from Meadow Pipits to Black-headed Gulls – making them a key species in Forvie’s springtime ecosystem.

Given a decent look, the sexes are easily told apart by their eyes. The female has a small head with smooth eyes, whereas the male has a much larger head dominated by a pair of large, bulbous and amusingly hairy eyes. I promise I’m not making this up. My attempt to photograph a mating pair was somewhat foiled by a combination of useless ‘smart’ phone and incompetent operator, but you can still just about make out the difference.

The warming temperatures that precipitated the St Mark’s Fly emergence also boosted the growth of wild flowers across the Reserve. These included the attractive (and delightfully fluffy) Kidney Vetch along the cliffs…

…and the first Northern Marsh Orchids of the year, which are always exciting to chance upon for the first time, though it’ll be another couple of weeks before they’re looking their best.

Forvie’s dune grasslands are also home to several varieties of hawkweeds and hawkbits – close relatives of Dandelions and Daisies – and these are notoriously hard to identify to species, with even seasoned botanists referring to them as ‘horrible yellow things’. However, one of the easier ones to identify is the diminutive Mouse-ear Hawkweed, with its distinctively pale, lemon-yellow flowers.

If in doubt about the ID, simply turn the flower over. Unlike its many similar-looking relatives, the Mouse-ear Hawkweed has distinctive red stripes on the underside of the flower. So if you turn over the flower and see red, it’ll be this species – but if not, it’s back to the drawing board (or rather the field guide).

And in case you’re wondering about the name, the ‘mouse-ear’ bit refers to the neat, hairy leaves, which are another useful identifying character – but I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether they do actually resemble a mouse’s ears.

On that note, I’ll sign off for the week – need to head off and rinse all the whitewash out of my clothes now. Oh, the glamour of Reserve work!

…till the May is oot – so goes the familiar Scots saying, with respect to the fickle nature of spring here in the north. Contrary to popular belief, the May in the saying refers not to the month itself, but to the blossom of the May Tree, an old country name for the Hawthorn. Regardless of the details, however, we’ve certainly not been casting any cloots (=removing any layers of clothing) here at Forvie, with the week having been dominated once again by blasting northerly winds and stingingly sharp showers. And as a result, there have been plenty other colourful sayings used this week, in both Scots and Anglo-Saxon – none of which are printable here.

On-the-ground conditions at the ternery this week have varied between moderate and outright dreadful; while I’m told that ‘gentle exfoliation’ is supposed to be good for you, I remain unconvinced that the severe version meted out by the elements at the ternery is good for anyone. Much to our relief, though, the fences, and more to the point the breeding birds present within, generally seem to be standing up to the onslaught reasonably well. Even so, the fence at the north end required a good deal of reconstructive surgery on Friday morning following overnight gales – a pleasant job in 45 mph of wind.

Unfortunately for us (and more pertinently, for our Little Terns), the continuing high winds and their associated sand-blow are also very efficiently burying all the shingle that we took great pains to fence in. What with this and all the recent Badger bother, I’d say that the early part of this season has been a trial of our patience, but to do so would be an understatement of Michael Fish proportions.

At times in this job, it’s easy to feel like everything’s ganging up on you – whether it’s wind, weather, predators, faulty equipment, paperwork, bureaucracy, recalcitrant visitors and their pets (thankfully a small minority), climate change, world politics, the levy on alcohol, or – worst of all – the very wildlife you’re trying to protect. In recent days we’ve had a series of Eider nests appearing within a few feet of the electric fence, but on the wrong side – I mean you can take the horse to water…

On a lighter note, the endlessly windy conditions and squally showers did somehow contrive to sculpt the ‘big dune’ – the broad, open sand-sheet to the north of the ternery – into an amusing tiger-striped pattern. Every cloud and all that.

Moving northwards through the Reserve, the estuary side opposite Newburgh quay is resplendent in bright yellow as the Gorse reaches its peak flowering period. On those rare days without a gale of wind (and rarer still, when the air temperature gets into double figures), the scent of the flowers hangs heavy in the air. Sweet, creamy and strongly reminiscent of coconut, it’s a smell you could almost drink. Pina colada anyone?

A Gorse thicket in full bloom in spring is about the only place and time that the male Yellowhammer could ever be considered well-camouflaged. Gorse is brilliant nesting habitat for small birds such as Yellowhammers, with the dense spiny foliage providing excellent fortification against potential predators, and I’ve often wondered whether the birds evolved their yellow plumage specifically for a life spent in and around this habitat. We often hear Yellowhammers singing from the tops of the Gorse bushes on both sides of the estuary; being yellow on yellow they can be surprisingly difficult to spot!

Continuing the yellow theme, the Primroses on the cliffs between Collieston and Rockend are now over and gone to seed, replaced instead by a flush of Cowslips. These distinctive and instantly-recognisable flowers are close relatives of the Primrose, and the two readily hybridise. The resulting hybrid offspring, known as False Oxlips, resemble a halfway-house between the two parent species, and these too are common on Forvie’s cliffs.

Also beginning to come to prominence along the cliffs is Thrift, with the first few clumps bursting into flower this week.

The cold and rough conditions we’ve experienced this week haven’t been conducive to lots of insect activity. Butterflies and moths have been painfully thin on the ground so far this season, though we did recently note the first Cinnabar Moths of the year on the wing. This species overwinters underground at the pupal stage, with the caterpillars having fattened themselves up on last summer’s crop of Ragwort before pupating in early autumn. When the adults subsequently emerge in late spring, it’s a lottery as to what the weather will throw at them, and the unlucky few to hatch this week were looking battered and bruised almost as soon as they had emerged.

Forvie’s other black-and-red day-flying moth, the Six-spot Burnet, is still at the larval stage of its life cycle just now. The bright-green-and-black caterpillars can be seen anywhere in South Forvie where the food-plant, Bird’s-foot Trefoil, is found growing. Once fed from end to end with trefoil leaves, the caterpillar will spin itself a papery cocoon attached to a stem of grass (or perhaps one of the tubular posts of the barrier fence) in which it will pupate, emerging as an adult just a fortnight or so later.

Other species of caterpillar are rather better adapted to the bitterly cold springs we so often seem to experience here these days. When it’s cold, you really want a nice fluffy jumper or fleecy coat on – which is exactly what the following two species have. The Garden Tiger moth is probably the most frequently-encountered hairy caterpillar at Forvie, in its distinctive orange, black and grey ‘British Rail coach upholstery’ colour scheme. I can almost smell the diesel and feel the itch of the velour. Happy days.

The Dark Tussock, meanwhile, has an amusing row of black-and-white tufts along the back of its green body, looking like miniature shaving brushes. However daft they may look, they’ll at least be helping to keep the caterpillar fine and warm – I’ve owned a few hats that fit exactly the same criteria.

Lastly, a bit of staffing news – we recently welcomed new warden Emma to the Reserve, where she will be taking up the role vacated by Danny at the end of last year. This being the case, you might say she has big boots to fill in every sense – but don’t worry, I promise we haven’t given her Danny’s old footwear. In the short time she’s been with us, Emma has already proved a capable, hardworking and popular member of the team, and with the summer just around the corner (or so we hope), it’s great that Forvie is back to having a full complement of staff once again.

That’s about all for this week, folks, so we’ll see you again in seven days. Wrap up warm in the meantime – and dinna cast ony cloots jist yet.

The first full week of May at Forvie turned out distinctly cool, and despite there having been a good deal of sunshine this past few days, conditions on the Reserve haven’t felt very spring-like. This was a little disappointing given that we’re now coming towards the business end of the spring (in fact, meteorological summer is now just three weeks away), though it is fairly representative of the late, cold springs that seem to be the norm nowadays. So there was nothing for it but to get happit up in our coats and toories (here in the North-east, we never properly put away our winter togs until at least the beginning of July anyway), and to carry on regardless.

One task that had to be completed this week was the annual nest census of Forvie’s Black-headed Gull colony. With the first chicks due to hatch any day, this wasn’t a job that could wait. However, it also isn’t a job that can be done in cold or wet conditions, as the risk of eggs becoming chilled is too great. So at the end of the previous week, when I saw the weather forecast for the week ahead (Tuesday onwards: 7^oC, feels like 2^oC…), my heart sank.

As it turned out, the only day of the week when conditions were suitably warm was Monday, which meant a frantic scramble to assemble a team of observers at short notice. Thus the team which convened on Monday morning basically consisted of all the poor unfortunates who hadn’t clocked off by 5pm the previous Friday, when I was casting about for help. Sorry folks – that’s several pints I owe you.

Anyway, with the priceless help of volunteers Jim and Richard, and colleagues Simon, Rhona and John from our ‘sister NNRs’ Muir of Dinnet and St Cyrus, we got the job done. The final score was 1,471 nests containing eggs – about 230 down on the previous year, but still a substantial colony, and one of considerable regional and national importance.

Earlier in the season it looked as though the breeding population would be bigger still, but with a series of Badger incursions into the colony occurring during late April (as reported by Catriona in her recent blog post), we think some of the gulls may have been put off from settling, and subsequently departed the colony. This is a stark example of the ‘frightening effect’ of mammalian predators upon ground-nesting birds: it’s not so much the actual damage done (e.g. eggs eaten or birds killed), but more the perception that the site isn’t a safe place to nest, resulting in abandonment.

It’s the exact same reason we ask our visitors to keep their dogs under close control on the Reserve: the sight of potential predators – whether Badgers by night, or off-lead dogs by day – is enough to cause birds to abandon their nests, or to dissuade them from settling in the first place. Think about it: would you choose to set up camp if you knew there were Polar Bears roaming the area? Chances are you’d probably not want to take the risk!

During the course of the gull nest census, we also happened upon the nests of several other species which share the habitat within the electric-fenced enclosure. These included a couple of Gadwall nests, typically well-hidden and snuggled down among the tussocks…

…and by way of contrast, the rudimentary scrapes of Oystercatcher and Ringed Plover upon the open sand and shingle.

As of Friday, the Ringed Plover’s nest in question contained two eggs, half the usual clutch size, with the remainder probably due to be laid over the weekend that followed. A full clutch of ‘Ringo’ eggs is a delight to see, as they have a habit of arranging the eggs with their points inwards, forming a perfect lucky four-leaf-clover shape. Here’s one from a previous season by way of illustration.

While a handful of pairs of Ringed Plovers nest at Forvie each summer, many hundreds (if not thousands) more pass through the Reserve en-route to breeding grounds much further north. A mixed flock of ‘tiddlers’ (my completely unscientific term for the various species of small waders) on the estuary this week contained over 220 Ringed Plovers, some of which may well have been bound for summer quarters in the Arctic Circle – quite a journey for such a small bird.

The Ringed Plover’s migratory exploits pale into insignificance compared with those of the Wheatear, the only songbird in the world which routinely crosses an actual ocean – the North Atlantic – in order to reach its breeding grounds. Some individuals spend the winter in central and southern Africa before migrating through Europe and across to Greenland and arctic Canada for the summer – just the three continents then – before returning again in the autumn. And this is a creature not much bigger than a sparrow – respect. This fine male Wheatear was bouncing around beside the estuary on Tuesday afternoon; we spent a few moments watching him, and wondering about all the places he’ll see in his lifetime that we never will.

Other migratory species arriving from Africa will possibly be having doubts about their wisdom, having received a cool reception from the North-east’s fickle weather. At least one Cuckoo has been present on the Reserve lately, bravely cuc-koo-ing away in spite of the chilly conditions, and generally staying well hidden in the dense cover of the willow scrub on the heath.

Also newly arrived from Africa are Forvie’s Sedge Warblers, those irrepressible singers whose scratchy and excitable song is uttered from the tops of the loch-side bushes by both day and night. This is one species whose spirits aren’t dampened by the cold.

The cold spring means a slow start for Forvie’s wild flowers, though the dunes are now beginning to brighten with the blues and purples of Wild Pansies and Heath Dog-violets – two closely-related species with an obvious family resemblance, though they’re easy enough to tell apart given a close enough look.

The slow start for plants means a similarly slow start for invertebrates. Volunteer Richard’s weekly butterfly transect at Forvie is usually hard going for the first few weeks of the season, though it’ll pick up markedly (we hope!) from next month. In the meantime, the Common Heath moth has begun to appear across the Reserve, adding some welcome variety.

So that just about sums up a chilly spring week at Forvie. We’ll see you again next week, hopefully this time without our coats and toories!