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!

“There’ll be a robot doing my job in fifteen years’ time!” This is my standard (and only half-joking) reply when I get asked about the use of technology in our work at Forvie. After all, the past fifteen years have seen monumental changes in how we work, communicate, live and interact with the world around us, with electronic tech at the centre of it all. And who knows how the world will look in a further fifteen! We’re currently going through the most rapid and dramatic period of technological change since the Industrial Revolution, and life on the Reserve is no exception.

Although my opening line probably sounds a bit flippant, there is more than a ring of truth to it. In my working life, I count birds and their nests: a drone could do that. I survey plants: a drone could do that too. I write reports and newsletters (and blogs, for that matter): AI could do that. I look after the groundskeeping: a robotic mower could do that. I engage with the general public: a chatbot could do that. The list goes on! There’s no doubt that at least some of these examples will become everyday reality in the foreseeable future.

Already, the life of a Reserve warden is unrecognisably different from that of his or her 20th Century counterpart. The laptop and smart phone have become indispensable tools of the trade, alongside the more traditional binoculars, notebook and spade, and all of us – even workaday folk like your author here – need to have some degree of technological savvy. Like any sort of change, this has both positive and negative sides to it.

As a naturalist, having a world of information available at your fingertips – in the literal sense – is a real game-changer. I am a frequent user of Google Lens (other similar programmes may also be available – maybe – I’m really not sure!), which can be very helpful indeed when you’re faced with an unfamiliar plant or insect, for example. Take a quick photo, feed it through Google Lens, and it’ll tell you what species you’re looking at – bingo! However, it’s by no means 100% accurate in its pronouncements, and it often requires a bit of further research on the part of the user in order to arrive at a correct identification. But what it does brilliantly is to point you in the right general direction, thereby saving you a huge amount of time and head-scratching.

I’m also a big fan, by proxy, of the Merlin app for identifying bird sounds (again, other similar things might be available…). I say ‘by proxy’ because I’ve never actually used it myself, having instead learned to ‘speak bird’ through many years of field experience – but I love the fact that it gets folk engaged with bird sounds, and thus with the natural world around them. We’ve observed in previous posts on this blog that nature somehow becomes much more accessible when we start to put names to things. Suddenly that babble of sound resolves itself into a Robin, two Willow Warblers, a Blackcap and a Song Thrush all singing over one another – and a whole new vista opens up to the would-be naturalist.

Like the aforementioned Google Lens, Merlin is far from 100% reliable (like all such programmes – and indeed like human naturalists – it’s still ‘learning’ all the time), and its pronouncements must sometimes be taken with a substantial pinch of salt. But that doesn’t matter: if it’s helping to get folk interested in nature, then it’s 100% positive as far as I’m concerned.

Drones are another piece of 21st Century technology with game-changing possibilities for nature conservation work, particularly when combined with AI (and just to be clear, that’s Artificial Intelligence – when I was a lad, AI meant something different, involving a man from the ministry of agriculture with a long rubber glove). The ongoing study of the Grey Seal haul-out at the mouth of the Ythan Estuary, being undertaken by researcher Claire Stainfield, is a great example.

Claire is using a drone, under licence and in carefully controlled conditions, to systematically photograph the haul-out on a regular basis, then ‘training’ an AI programme to identify and count the seals in the photos. This allows for much greater accuracy than a ‘manual’ count using telescope and clicker, and also captures data on population demographics (i.e. age and sex of each individual seal), which would be impossible using conventional methods. Claire’s work may well go on to set the standard for marine mammal survey in future, and we’re delighted to be able to host her ongoing study here on the Reserve.

Drone and camera technology are advancing all the time, and we have an eye on the future in terms of our seabird monitoring at Forvie. While the tech’s not quite there yet, there may come a time when we can carry out some of our nest censuses by similar methods to those used by Claire for counting the seals. This would clearly be easier for a species that nests entirely in the open (e.g. Sandwich Tern) than one that tends to hide in dense cover (e.g. Eider), though thermal-imaging technology may provide a solution to that particular problem.

Then there is the issue of deciding whether a bird captured on camera is actually sitting on a nest, or just sitting down and having a rest, or whatever. It’s likely that a good deal of ‘ground-truthing’ work would be required – i.e. conventional nest counts carried out by observers on the ground within the colonies, alongside the drone counts, to see how the two compare. And there’d also be the issue of establishing the birds’ own tolerances to the presence of a drone (some species are already known to be averse to drones, and recreational drone use already causes a huge amount of disturbance to nesting, feeding and roosting birds in some places). But if it did work, it could obviate the need to actually enter the colony and put all the birds off their nests, which would be a win all round. Time will tell!

My overwhelming hope, as the meteoric rise of electronic technology continues, is that we as human beings are able to retain our connection with nature. This is where the tech can be a double-edged sword: while we have more information available to us than ever before, we can end up living our lives through an electronic interface rather than experiencing things first-hand. I could almost weep when I see somebody out on the Reserve with headphones on and head bowed, eyes to their phone: you’ve no idea what you’re missing! But as long as we can use technology to enhance our experiences with nature, and not to replace them, all to the good.

One final point to make, and in my own defence too. I realise there’ll be folk reading this who know me reasonably well, who are probably thinking “I can’t believe he’s writing about technology” – fair point, given my fractious relationship with all things electronic. Sure, I remain happier working a spade than a smart phone, and that’ll likely never change. But like every other creature on planet earth, I’ll have to evolve and adapt, or go extinct. Perhaps I’ll book myself some evening classes…

Another bright and breezy week at Forvie has passed by since our last update, and once again it’s felt like we’ve been running to stay in the one spot. In this respect, it’s been a typical April week: this is the time of the year when nothing stands still for any length of time – not least those of us who work on the Reserve!

The landscape of South Forvie certainly hasn’t stood still this spring. Since we put up the ternery electric fence in early March, the wind and weather have been continually moving the sand around, causing us a weekly maintenance headache. Moreover, the precious and coveted areas of exposed shingle – first-class Little Tern habitat – have correspondingly moved too, and we’ve had to work hard to keep up with the changes.

What we don’t want to do is a) go to the trouble of maintaining a fence around a load of useless drifted sand where nothing will nest, and b) leave lots of great Little Tern habitat outside the protection of the fence. Do this, and the inevitable will then happen when the birds arrive back from Africa: after all, Little Terns aren’t known for their intelligence or sensible decision-making.

Consequently, this week we had to re-route a substantial length of the electric fence in order to accommodate the changes in the landscape in the past couple of weeks. This is only possible before the birds have settled; once they’re nesting, we can’t carry out intrusive work like this. Fingers crossed, then, that we don’t see further dramatic change in the coming weeks.

As we’ve long said, the shingle areas of South Forvie act as a time-capsule for both geological and human history. Sure enough, Catriona found two distinctly-contrasting fragments of history during the course of the job: a piece of worked flint from a previous millennium, and a .303 cartridge from the Second World War. Two items spanning three thousand years of human history, side by side among the shingle, each unearthed by the relentless wind.

Moving around in windy conditions isn’t easy when you’re the size of a Bumblebee. Thus when the wind gets up – which is frequently at the moment – many of our flying insects are forced to keep a low profile. This White-tailed Bumblebee was found clinging grimly onto a wildly-thrashing Daffodil flower on one of the windier mornings this week.

No such bother for terrestrial beasties though: this Banded Snail, with its low centre of gravity and ‘low-ratio gearbox’ (i.e. low speed and high tractive effort) remained completely untroubled by the gale raging above.

The sands of South Forvie may be moving in all directions at the behest of the wind, but on the adjacent estuary, the movement of waterbirds is distinctly northward. Some, like this Sanderling, will eventually turn north-westwards towards Iceland and Greenland…

…while others, like these Bar-tailed Godwits – in contrasting winter (grey) and summer (brick-red) plumages – will be bound north-eastwards to the tundra of Scandinavia and Arctic Russia.

These Golden Plover, also resplendent in their summer plumage of black and gold, may be headed in either direction; some may even stay and breed on the hills here in Scotland.

In addition to the northward movement of birds, there was also one notable westward migration this week. On Wednesday we were delighted to welcome a group of visitors from the county government of Rogaland, Norway. The group comprised thirty staff from the county’s environmental protection department – essentially our counterparts on the other side of the North Sea – and it was both interesting and enlightening to compare notes with one another.

In chatting with the delegates, I learned that there are certain parallels between Rogaland and Aberdeenshire in terms of climate, wildlife, and elements of landscape and culture. But there are notable differences too, and I was surprised that certain species that we take for granted here are scarce or absent just across the North Sea. Grey Seal and Sandwich Tern were two particular favourites of the group…

…while I was astonished to learn that Rooks – abundant and widespread in lowland Scotland – are almost entirely absent from similar-looking agricultural areas in Rogaland. I said that I’d happily swap some of our Rooks for some of their Bluethroats, but unfortunately I don’t think it works like that – and given that we’re each essentially government bodies, the volume of paperwork involved in such an exchange would be horrific. Ah well, I’d better just be content watching Rooks then!

Some of the group were fascinated to learn that we had European Wild Rabbits here at Forvie – though I did point out that our present-day Rabbit population is a mere relict of that which existed in the 20th Century, before the advent of myxomatosis and viral haemorrhagic disease. I suppose it’s easy for us to forget that the humble Rabbit is an iconic species in Europe, and an environmental keystone too, shaping the landscape through its intensive grazing and digging.

This was a fine example of the joy inherent in showing people from other parts of the world around your own patch. Such occasions can offer new perspectives on the familiar, which feels enjoyably refreshing – especially for us old-timers who have been working the same patch for many a year!

We’ll finish up this week with a couple of ‘how did you get here?’ curiosities. First up, the desiccated remains of this little flatfish – presumably a Dab or Flounder – which was sitting high and dry atop the cliffs just south of Hackley Bay. Presumably this had been captured by a large gull (or if not captured, then perhaps purloined from a fishing Cormorant) and taken ashore, only for the gull to eventually realise that the dimensions of the fish didn’t match those of its gape. I can’t be sure of course, but this seems the likeliest explanation… that said, however, we’ve had a few days lately that have been plenty windy enough to blow the fish out of the sea.

Stranger still was this dinky rubber duck that turned up inside the ternery electric fence, in the Black-headed Gull colony. I can only think that it was carried back to the colony by one of the gulls, having been picked up somewhere along the estuary or beach. Quite what the gull was thinking remains a mystery; either it mistook the duck for some sort of fast food item (right enough, it probably constitutes roughly the same nutritional value as the output from certain burger chains), or perhaps it was thinking ahead to egg-hatching time – a nice bathtime toy to keep the kids amused. How else, after all, do you entertain a brood of bored Black-headed Gull chicks?

On that note, it’s probably best that I get this piece wrapped up, before it descends any further into total farce. Can you tell it’s been a long week at work?!

April at Forvie is typically a month of contrasts. Any given day can feel like summer or winter – or indeed a bit of both in the same day – and this past week was a case in point. It’s also a month of change, with a constant turnover of arrivals and departures among our wildlife, as well as being a month of intense activity for the Reserve team – not to mention a rollercoaster of emotions too. Right enough, the past few days have ably demonstrated the ups and downs of life on the Reserve in April.

On Monday, with Storm Dave having vacated the region the previous day, we finally switched on the ternery electric fence. This had been scheduled for the previous week, but since we fully expected Dave to wreck the fence over the weekend, we’d left it switched off as a precaution. However, Dave wasn’t nearly as angry and destructive as we’d feared, and thanks to sterling work by weekend warden Joe (who has just returned to Forvie for his third summer season), the fence was in good shape on Monday morning, and ready to take power.

I often feel we ought to get some sort of minor celebrity to carry out the grand switch-on, much as they do with the Christmas lights in seemingly every town and city in the UK. However, owing to an acute shortage of available soap-opera stars, TV chefs and retired sportspeople, Catriona and I had to do the honours instead.

As it happened, the switch-on occurred not a moment too soon. By Wednesday, the first Black-headed Gull eggs had appeared in the colony, just a day later than the first laying date in 2025. You could almost set your calendar by them! This means we’re now plotting for the whole-colony nest census, which we’ll aim to undertake in the first week of May, immediately prior to the first chicks hatching.

The fine weather that undoubtedly spurred on the gulls also produced an uptick in flying insect activity. Bumblebees were plentiful on the fine days (chiefly the White-tailed and Buff-tailed varieties), and several butterfly species occurred for the first time this year, namely Small White, Green-veined White and Peacock. The latter, especially, is always a treat to see, with its vibrant colours and those incredible false eyes.

While the sunshine has been very enjoyable for our visitors, staff and wildlife alike, it has often been accompanied by a variable breeze and a lively swell at sea. The net result is a lot of damage to the beach barrier fence, which is currently requiring maintenance several times a week.

All that digging and sledging in such a wet, salty and abrasive environment is hard on our footwear, as I found out to my cost on Friday while carrying out yet another repair down by the low-water mark…

I chose ‘ups and downs’ as the theme for this week’s musings for a number of reasons, and the latter included a couple of long-dead trees at Waterside Wood that dear old Dave had partly pushed over. With high numbers of visitors using the Reserve during the Easter holidays, we had to get an early start one morning in order to get the hung-up trees safely down and dismantled before the majority of folk were up and about. Then it was back up to Collieston for a well-earned breakfast-time cuppa!

One of the major ‘ups’ this week has been the arrival of several of our summer visitors to Forvie for the first time this year. Swallow, Sand Martin, Blackcap, Wheatear and Osprey have all made their 2026 debuts in the past few days, fresh from their winter quarters in Africa. It’s invariably an uplifting experience to meet with your first summer migrants – a bit like being reunited with old friends after months of absence.

Many of these migrant birds are arriving on our shores in the hope of raising a family in the coming few months. In theory, Forvie is a great place for them to do just that – a nature reserve, a specially protected site, and thereby a sanctuary for wildlife – but only if the people who also use the Reserve are sufficiently careful and considerate. To this end, we’ve been dismayed so far this spring to see how few dog-walkers on the Reserve are respectful of our ‘dogs on leads or at heel’ request, with the compliance rate at times less than 30% (and we’re extremely grateful, of course, to the 30% who do act responsibly). With a high visitor footfall at Easter, that’s a lot of uncontrolled dogs, and a lot of needless disturbance.

Indeed, it’s not ‘just’ the wildlife that suffers from this lack of consideration; the Reserve team is affected as well. Every time I see people disrespecting the Reserve and its wildlife, and treating it as a personal playground for themselves and their pets, another little piece of my soul dies. At this rate, I’ll need to get myself a new soul (or at least a reconditioned second-hand one) by the end of the summer season. Working on the Reserve is a vocation, and this comes with both an up side and a down side. On the up side it can be utterly fulfilling, but on the down side, it can hurt too. Thus is life!

While we can’t help but get a bit downcast sometimes in the face of unhelpful attitudes and behaviours, at other times our faith in humanity receives a welcome boost. This was very much the case on Wednesday, when we teamed up with Lauren from East Grampian Coastal Partnership to carry out a beach clean along the shores of the Ythan Estuary. Lauren did a great job of drumming up interest – and we were helped too by a very pleasant day’s weather – with no fewer than 28 folk showing up to help out. After a lively morning’s teamwork, and some great craic with some lovely people, we found that we had collectively lifted a whopping 365 kg of litter from the estuary – more than a third of a ton. What a great result.

So after a week of ups and downs, we were exceptionally grateful to everyone who attended for their hard work, their good company, and – perhaps best of all – for giving us a lift when we most needed one. Thanks a million – and we’ll hopefully see you all back on the Reserve again in the future.

It’s been one of those weeks when spring can’t decide if it’s coming or going. One minute, you’re too hot with your jacket on. The next, you’re rummaging for hats and gloves and cursing the weather gods. And it’s not just the reserve staff who don’t know what to do with themselves in this weather – some of the plants don’t, either. Celandines are the ultimate sun worshippers in early spring: on a fine day, the grass is studded with cheery yellow flowers, all turning slowly to follow the sun across the sky.

But they were in for a shock on Thursday. A hard overnight frost took us all by surprise and, first thing, they were firmly closed to protect their precious petals from the biting cold.

For early-emerging insects, a hard frost can be fatal. We’ve only just started to see butterflies and bumblebees in the past fortnight, and this small tortoiseshell butterfly was the first we’d seen actually on the reserve. It looks surprisingly fresh, given it will have overwintered in a shed or pile of vegetation. Let’s hope it found somewhere sheltered to spend the cold and frosty night.

The cold, north-westerly wind has also put a bit of a halt on migration. While animals are on a clock to get north and breed, a head wind is extremely unhelpful. Many birds will pause in their migration so they don’t burn up too much energy battling into the wind, waiting instead for a break in the weather before making the perilous North Sea crossing. This chiffchaff was probably doing this, pausing to feed until the wind dropped, then moving on under a still, starry sky.

Even the tufted ducks and wigeon on the Sand Loch, all of whom were displaying furiously on Tuesday, had given up on the idea by Thursday. When it’s still (which it hasn’t been very often of late), you can sometimes hear the tufties ‘bibbling’ enthusiastically at one another, trying to impress the females. Whom, I must say, tend to look overwhelmingly unimpressed by the whole performance.

The wigeon, meanwhile, had given up on the whole idea and were keeping their heads down in the sheltered drain at the north end of the loch. It was clearly too cold for them to get amorous, so they were concentrating on eating as much in the way of pond plants as they could.

All in all, the weather hasn’t been doing any of us many favours this week. On Monday morning, we were greeted by the after-effects of the weekend’s gales at the ternery. Our carefully-erected predator-proof fence has sadly not proved weather-proof and quite a number of repairs were needed. It’s definitely a good job you can’t hear what we were muttering in this picture!

The fence will be needed very soon. By Thursday, 34 Sandwich terns had arrived back and we’ve seen the first pair displaying over the colony, dangling a fish and soaring high to prove their fitness. They’re basically saying to one another, “Look at me, I’ve got a fish – aren’t I clever – I’d be a great parent for your babies!”.

The black-headed gulls are also going to need the fence, and a lot sooner that the ‘sarnies’. There must have been over 1,000 birds in the colony this week, and we’re expecting (or maybe ‘egg-specting’?) the first eggs any day now.

Gulls in general get a bad press, but they are actually very handsome birds. We’re very fond of our ‘headers’ here and they are looking at their best now, at the start of the breeding season. With their smart chocolate-brown hoods and cute white ‘eyeliner’, they are attractive and engaging birds. Given that we can have up to 20% of the whole Scottish population nesting within the protection of our electric fence, we need to make sure we keep it in good working order.

While the fence is generally pretty good at keeping out foxes and badgers, we were surprised and concerned to find the prints of American mink near the ternery last week. Thanks to the great work done by lots of fishery boards and our friends at Scottish Invasive Species Initiative, mink are very rarely seen on the Ythan these days. However, upon spotting these prints, we hastily got in touch with SISI officer (and former Forvie seasonal warden) Robert, who supplied us with a mink trap. He told us two mink have been caught locally in the past fortnight, so it may be that ‘our’ mink is no more, but with an internationally-important colony of breeding birds to protect, we can’t take any chances.

With the advent of the 1st of April this week, we have also put up our ‘barrier fence’, and the south of the reserve is now closed until the terns and gulls have finished breeding. As always, we greatly appreciate everyone who respects this. We also greatly appreciated the help of our crack volunteer team in getting the fence up. Our ‘usual’ beach vehicle access from Rockend has been cut off by sand movement, so this meant we had to carry all the poles and equipment from the estuary side to the beach. This is extremely hard work as you’re carrying a heavy load over more than half a mile of soft sand. It was a tough day to start back for seasonal Joe, whom we’re delighted to say is rejoining us for his third season. Welcome back!

But, after a hard morning of calf-and-thigh-aching trudging through the sand, we had the fence up. As always, we owe a huge debt of thanks to the team for helping us out – we genuinely couldn’t do it without you.

So, that just about wraps up another week on the reserve. I’m off to vainly attempt to empty that sand out of my boots. See you next week!

Life at Forvie is seldom dull, but this week the excitement started before the working week had even begun. The spring equinox weekend saw a fine display of aurora borealis over the Reserve and the village of Collieston, and plans for an early night went out the window; after all, it’s not every week that the ‘merrie dancers’ come to town.

The working week then began on Monday with another excursion to Muir of Dinnet NNR, this time to attend a training course. Being multi-disciplined sort of folk (well, jacks of all trades at least), our jobs involve a continual merry-go-round of training, assessments and refresher courses covering a multitude of different subjects, from first-aid and species identification to chainsaw operation and off-road driving. In a fine illustration of the eclectic nature of our working lives, the subject of this week’s course was muirburn – the practice of using fire as a land-management tool.

Muirburn has been used at Muir of Dinnet for many years to maintain the rare and unusual dwarf-shrub heath found there. The old, rank growth of heather is periodically burned off, promoting the growth of more specialised plants such as Bearberry and Intermediate Wintergreen. In the absence of large grazers like wild cattle, the heath would eventually turn into woodland if left to its own devices, and the rare plants would be lost. In this instance, controlled burning is a useful technique for maintaining this scarce and fragile habitat.

Burning is also widely used on sporting estates to create a patchwork of old and new-growth heather, in order to provide favourable habitat for Red Grouse, and indeed this was once the case here at Forvie. Our very own coastal heath was managed as a grouse shoot by Slains Estate, the Reserve’s former owners, until the late 1970s. After the rotational burning of the heath stopped, the grouse population slowly dwindled, and there have been no confirmed records at Forvie for twenty-odd years now. I still ‘need’ Red Grouse for a local-patch tick!

But while prescribed burning has long been a feature of land management in Scotland, in recent years there has been a marked increase in decidedly un-prescribed burning too. Wildfires are fast becoming a fact of life in 21st Century Scotland, as a result of a warming climate and an ever-increasing footfall in the countryside. Some fires are started by genuine accidents, some through acts of stupidity or carelessness, and some are even set deliberately, but the end result is much the same. Perhaps surprisingly, prescribed burning can also be used to control and extinguish wildfires (by the creation of fuel-deprived firebreaks ahead of the wildfire front), and our course also covered this aspect. We all left at the end of the day hoping we’d never have to do this for real – fingers firmly crossed.

On Tuesday we were back on the home patch, and the morning was spent tripping the materials for the barrier fence from the workshop down to the estuary. Regular readers and local residents will be very familiar with the barrier fence: it’s the literal ‘line in the sand’ that denotes the sanctuary area of South Forvie, containing the ternery and seal haul-out, which is closed to the public during spring and summer. This simple but critical piece of infrastructure plays an extremely important role in protecting Forvie’s internationally-important populations of breeding birds each year.

The barrier fence normally goes up on 1st April, marking the ‘official’ start of the bird breeding season. When completed, the fence will span the full width of the Forvie peninsula, from the low-water mark on the estuary to the low-water mark on the beach, with both ends of the fence being completely submerged at high tide. Now obviously if you want to put up a fence in the intertidal zone, you’ll need to work at low tide, and this year’s tide times are notably unhelpful: on 1st April, high water is right in the middle of the day. So we were forced to get the intertidal bits of the fence done this week, a few days earlier than usual, when the tides were more favourable.

Just to add further complication, thanks to the winter storms and their associated erosion and deposition, we no longer have vehicle access to the beach – so all the beach fence infrastructure had to be manually carried over the half-mile of sandy footpath from the estuary. Thankfully our trusty band of volunteers answered the call-to-arms, and the many hands made the work considerably lighter than it might have been. What a team.

Both ends of the fence were put up by close of play on Thursday (though I strongly suspect the wind and sea will be ‘rearranging’ them as we speak), but we won’t complete the rest of the fence until the usual date of 1st April. Tackling this job in instalments does at least make it easier on our backs and legs than doing it all in the one day – every cloud and all that!

Speaking of great teamwork, we owe a debt of thanks this week to North East Sea Kayakers, whose members carried out their annual litter-pick of the upper Ythan Estuary. Kayakers, of course, can reach the parts of the Reserve where wardens in wellies would be out of their depth, and as such they were able to recover a lot of litter that would normally be outwith our reach. Thanks folks – what a great effort.

Speaking of beach rubbish, we were amazed recently to find this old sign washed up on the estuary. This artefact dates from the early days of the seal haul-out, when we repurposed some redundant wooden signs and used them to display warning notices on the approach to the haul-out. One of these stood on the beach near the ternery, but after a few months it was washed out by a high tide and never seen again – until this week, after approximately ten years missing in action!

A welcome sight this week were the golden-hued flowers of Colt’s-foot, brightening up the windblown dune-slacks of South Forvie. Although a bonny sight, Colt’s-foot is also undeniably a bit weird: its flowers, borne upon oddly scaly stems, emerge from the ground weeks in advance of its leaves. This gives it the appearance of a desert plant, conjured from the bare sands by the merest splash of rain, beautiful and ephemeral. In the sandhills of South Forvie, this is a totally believable analogy, but Colt’s-foot is in fact a reliable early-spring flower here, come rain or shine.

The golden flowers of Colt’s-foot were given a run for their money in the brightness stakes by the crown of this Goldcrest, who stopped by during the week en-route to its summer home in Scandinavia.

Stopping off for a quick feed, wash and brush-up in our coastal garden at the top of Forvie, this tiny traveller was likely enjoying its last bath before setting out on its epic solo sea-crossing. The following morning there was no sign of ‘our’ Goldcrest, and it seems incredible to think that by that time it could have been back home in the spruce forests of Norway.

And so a colourful week comes to an end, with the month of March now practically done and dusted too. See you next week, in April no less – where is 2026 going?!

The third week of March continued in much the same vein as the preceding fortnight, with the pedal pressed firmly to the metaphorical metal throughout. While this is always a busy period of the year, the spring of 2026 has proved especially frenetic so far, with the Reserve team being one person short since Danny’s departure at the turn of the year. Fair to say we’re running to stay in the one spot at the moment!

Reserve manager Catriona has been embroiled in the process of trying to recruit a ‘new Danny’, of which hopefully more to report in a future blog post, while still trying to get out on site as much as she can. Meanwhile, I and our team of superstar volunteers have been hard at work on the ternery electric fence – and with some degree of urgency too, as it looks like the birds are fancying an early start this year.

The first couple of working days of the week were ferociously windy, and predictably we had to spend a fair bit of time repairing the damage to the fence caused by the weather. Although by Tuesday the sun was shining, the working conditions on the ground were far from hospitable. Thankfully we had flasks of hot tea and some essential energy-giving foodstuffs (i.e. biscuits) to help us through the day.

By the end of the working week, the fence was functionally complete, though it won’t be electrified until the Black-headed Gulls are ready to start egg-laying (probably in early April, but maybe earlier if the weather remains fine). We’ll just cross our fingers that it doesn’t get destroyed by the wind in the interim.

As alluded to earlier on, the Black-headed Gulls appear to be very quick out of the blocks this year. On Tuesday morning there must have been the thick end of 1,000 birds on the colony, which is an extraordinary number for this early stage of the season. We’re very much hoping that this is a good omen for the months ahead. Black-headed Gulls have declined by more than 75% in Scotland since the turn of the century, and ‘our’ colony is now of disproportionately high importance at a national scale.

Further to this, Tuesday also saw our first Sandwich Tern back on the Reserve for the summer, having spent the northern winter soaking up the sun in southern Africa. After the Black-headers, Sandwich Terns are always the next-earliest species to get started at the ternery, and Tuesday’s singleton represented the second-earliest arrival date in my 20 springs at Forvie. By Thursday it had company too, with four birds seen in flight high over the colony, calling excitably. It’s starting to sound a lot like summer in South Forvie.

With the breeding birds beginning to arrive and settle, and the protective fence taking shape, now is the time when we start getting twitchy about the presence of potential predators. The soft sand around the ternery at least makes for good tracking conditions – that is when there’s not a gale blowing – and this allows us to see which mammal species have been coming and going while our backs are turned. While some of Forvie’s resident mammals don’t cause us any worries…

…others tend to make us a bit nervous…

…and others bring us out into the cold sweats!

On Thursday we spotted a particularly unwelcome set of mammal tracks along the estuary just next-door to the ternery. The gait was obviously that of a mustelid (i.e. weasel family), though the tracks were obviously too large for a Stoat but too small for an Otter. With both Pine Marten and Polecat being extremely unlikely visitors to this sort of environment, we could only conclude that the tracks had been left by an American Mink, a highly-destructive alien species and a serious predator of ground-nesting birds. This was duly reported to former Forvie warden Robert, now of Scottish Invasive Species Initiative notoriety, and from now on we will be on high alert for any further evidence of Mink on our patch.

On a lighter note, we also recorded the tracks of an endangered species – an Isuzu diesel pickup truck, the Reserve’s off-road workhorse. As NatureScot transitions from petrol and diesel vehicles to electric ones, it’s likely our next truck will have a very different footprint (in every sense of the word) to our current one.

While working at the ternery, we often find interesting or downright bizarre items emerging from the sand as the landscape shifts with the wind and tides. We’ve often referred to this part of the Reserve as being like a time-capsule, hiding the secrets of times long forgotten. This week, for example, we happened upon an ancient and extremely corroded fork, or ‘graip’ in local terminology; how long it had lain beneath the sand remains a mystery, but suffice to say it probably hadn’t been manufactured in the Far East and bought in the local garden centre.

Speaking of the Far East, this one was a real mystery. A can of Sprite, apparently some years old, and – completely inexplicably – from Vietnam. Go figure.

Towards the end of the week, I managed to tear myself away from the ternery fence for a short time to carry out a couple of waterfowl counts on the estuary. We usually undertake these counts in the teeth of a gale, gritting our teeth against the rain and the windblown sand; by comparison, this week’s viewing conditions were positively tropical.

Elsewhere on the Reserve, spring is gradually seeping in. At Waterside, the Hazel trees are dense with catkins, with the various Willows across the moor soon to follow suit. These will be gratefully visited by early-emerging insects in the coming days.

Across the Reserve, the Skylark chorus has been cranked up to full volume, and it’s now almost impossible not to notice them. If the raucous babble of gulls and terns is the soundtrack to summer in South Forvie, so the musical outpourings of Skylarks define the season in the north of the Reserve.

Meanwhile, our first returning migrant songbirds – Chiffchaffs – are back from their winter travels in the south, and their simple but delightful ditty can be heard again in the wooded inland fringes of the Reserve.

The couple of really fine days at the end of the working week also gave us a couple of really fine evenings too. This was the scene after sundown on Thursday, looking westwards over Sand Loch.

And on that peaceful note, I’m going to sign off and put the kettle on, for what I hope to think is a well-earned brew – phew!