In the annual cycle of life and work at Forvie, the first week of March represents the beginning of the ‘crazy season’. From this point onwards, it’ll be all hands on deck for six months of mayhem, much of which revolves around the Reserve’s breeding birds. Heavy metallers Motorhead may have had ‘no sleep till Hammersmith’, but for us it’ll be ‘no sleep till September’ – or at least that’s how it feels.

The opening ceremony to this prolonged and vibrant festival of life is the ‘tern fence week’, when we begin work on the electric fence which will protect – or so we hope – Forvie’s ternery from the attentions of predators during the coming summer. It’s a huge milestone in the year here, and invariably requires a good deal of hard yakka – and a genuine team effort.

The electric fence encloses an area of about five hectares, comprising a mosaic of low dunes, short grassland, dense stands of nettles and willowherb, and patches of bare sand and shingle. The varied habitats within the enclosure suit a corresponding variety of nesting birds, with some species favouring open ground (Little Tern, Sandwich Tern, Oystercatcher), some choosing dense cover (Eider, Gadwall, Grey Partridge), and others favouring the short tussocky grassland in between (Black-headed Gull, Arctic Tern, Common Tern). Each species has its own particular niche, and we try to cater for each of them when preparing the enclosure at the start of the season.

With much of the area covered in a thick thatch of Marram Grass, the first job of ‘tern fence week’ is the laborious process of cutting a ride through the dense vegetation to accommodate the fence.

Located as it is at the southernmost tip of the Reserve, access to the ternery by vehicle is dependent upon favourable tides. With the winter’s storms having cut off our beach access at Rockend, our only remaining vehicle route to the ternery is along the estuary foreshore at low tide. However, this week’s tide times were far from ideal, and on Monday I was unable to get down to the ternery until 3pm. Consequently it was a case of having to use all the available daylight; I eventually had to admit defeat at about 6pm, by which point I could have done with a set of headlights on the brushcutter.

Indeed, by the time I had loaded the brushcutter and its accoutrements into the back of the pickup truck, the moon had already risen over the dunes on the eastern horizon.

With the ride-cutting complete, it was then a case of shifting the requisite half-ton of fencing materials from the workshop to the ternery. This was done in two instalments, for the simple reason that it doesn’t all fit in the truck in one go. The 2026 edition of the ternery fence necessitates no fewer than twenty-two rolls of mesh netting, which will stretch to a whopping 1,100 metres, plus an additional forty-odd bundles of plastic insulating poles which will eventually carry the 2,200 metres of steel wire. That’s a lot of lifting and shifting – and once again we had to work around some awkward tide times, with the two drop-offs happening first thing and last thing in the working day.

With all the materials now in-situ and ready to go, Wednesday saw us assemble a crack team of friends, volunteers and colleagues (they’re all the same thing really!) for the mammoth task of turning the heap of components into something resembling a functioning fence. The team comprised a mixture of old hands and new faces, and we started off with the usual ‘team talk’ and introductions. As an ice-breaker, I usually ask folk to say who they are, where they’re from, and a fun fact about themselves. In case you’re wondering, mine went as follows: Daryl; estate worker and dogsbody here at Forvie; I once dislocated my shoulder without spilling my pint (true story by the way).

There then followed a masterclass (ahem!) in how to unpack and erect each roll of mesh netting. While it does a great job for us, I’m convinced the stuff must have been designed and manufactured by the devil himself, as it’s infuriating stuff to work with. Scratchy, catchy and invariably awkward to handle, it snags itself on anything and everything with which it comes into contact – including the treads of your boots, the zips on your jacket and the ends of your wits.

The difficulties of the day weren’t just confined to recalcitrant fencing materials. A perennial problem is knowing what to fence in and what to leave out, particularly in the extremely dynamic landscape along the northern edge of the enclosure. We always aim to fence in as much exposed shingle as we can, as this is first-rate Little Tern habitat. However, we’re always trying to second-guess which areas the birds will choose for nesting, and how the wind and weather might alter the landscape during the course of the season; this involves a lot of educated guesswork and considerable crossing of fingers. Get it wrong, and the penalties can range from a six-month maintenance headache to the complete failure of the breeding birds in the coming season. No pressure then.

Ultimately you have to roll the loaded dice, and hope to goodness that you’ve made the right choice. I shall report back in August – wish us all luck.

With the North-east having enjoyed some fine spring weather at times in the past few days, our Black-headed Gulls have been quick out of the blocks this year, and by Tuesday morning they were already prospecting on the colony. This fence can’t go up a moment too soon!

Likewise our Ringed Plovers, who are already occupying the shingle areas; on Wednesday they kept a weather eye on us as we worked, as if making sure we were getting things right. The lives of their offspring, like so many others, will depend on the effectiveness (or otherwise) of the finished fence.

We were also kept company by a single Snow Bunting – cue another one of those dreadful ‘phone-camera-through-the-binoculars’ photographs…

What d’you mean, you couldn’t see it???

OK, let’s zoom in a bit then… see, I told you it was there!

That’s quite enough of that rubbish – here’s a photo where you can actually see what a Snow Bunting looks like. Thank goodness there are people around with better photographic skills than mine.

The week ended with a couple more fine spring days, and we were able to glimpse that rare phenomenon that had eluded us for the first two months of the year: a sunset over the estuary. I was that busy gawping at it that I forgot to get a photo until after the sun had actually dropped. That’s what rarities do to a naturalist though.

So that’s week one of the crazy season done then – just another twenty-five to go…

Yep, that’s right, folks – spring is officially here. February has now shuffled wearily offstage, taking with it the winter of 2025-26, and this first day of March represents day one of meteorological spring. I write these lines with a nagging sense of trepidation though, not wishing to put a jinx on the whole thing, nor to be roundly blamed when the next month turns out cold and miserable. After all, spring here in North-east Scotland is a fickle mistress; we’ve all lived through enough ‘teuchit storms’ and ‘beasts from the east’ to realise it too. But hey, let’s not allow pragmatism to get in the way of optimism all the time.

In case anyone’s wondering about the term ‘teuchit storm’ by the way, this is an expression which, as far as I know, is peculiar to the North-east. In the Doric language of Aberdeenshire – which, like so many regional dialects, is sadly on the wane these days – Teuchit (rough pronunciation ‘chook-it’) is one of the many old names for the Lapwing. It was said that the Lapwings always began nesting immediately after the last big storm of the season, which often took place in early spring; this last blast of winter’s fury was thus the ‘teuchit storm’. The passing of this storm then signalled the start of spring in earnest – or so the theory goes.

Sadly, breeding Lapwings in the North-east have gone much the same way as the Doric language: once an everyday feature of rural life, now much-declined and with an uncertain future. Locally, though, Lapwings are still hanging on as a breeding species alongside the upper reaches of the Ythan Estuary, while Continental-breeding Lapwings continue to overwinter with us in reasonable numbers. We remain hopeful that both the birds, and the language that surrounds them, can endure the huge changes currently taking place in the world.

Anyway, having got the weather-related disclaimers out of the way at the start of this piece, we can now start to look ahead to the season at hand. Spring is a particularly exciting time for the naturalist, not least because things begin to diversify again after the winter lull. Throughout the winter, I am aware that this blog tends to subsist on a rather restricted diet: chiefly birds, seals and whatever the weather chucks at us. But come the spring, we can add into the mix all those ingredients that have been absent over the past few months: plants, insects, amphibians and so on. Variety is undoubtedly the spice of life, and the new season brings with it a welcome chance of variety.

Lesser Celandines are invariably one of the very first flowers to emerge each spring. Their glossy green leaves have already been up for some time now, but it’s only when the flowers open that this plant becomes really obvious. Each individual flower resembles a child’s drawing of the sun, which is entirely appropriate for a plant that craves sunlight. On a typical spring day, when the sunshine comes and goes in between the passing of clouds, so the Celandine flowers open and close in synchrony. The net result is that you could easily walk past a patch of them on an overcast day without realising they’re there at all – but the next day when the sun is out, you’d be hard-pressed to miss them.

Tough, hardy and the bane of many a tidy-minded gardener, the humble Dandelion is another reliable early-season flower. If you can bring yourself to spare some of these much-maligned plants in your own garden, you’ll be doing a big favour to any early-emerging insects on the go in this next few weeks. For species such as Buff-tailed and White-tailed Bumblebees, which hibernate overwinter as adults, an early feed of nectar immediately after emergence is crucial. Dandelions provide that very opportunity, at a time when other sources of nectar are still very thin on the ground.

The same applies for butterflies which overwinter as adults too. The classic example is the Small Tortoiseshell, another species in long-term decline, and one which could use all the help it can get. So consider being an ‘untidy’ gardener – not only will you save wear and tear on your back, but you’ll help save some wildlife too.

During the latter part of the winter, while doing some work in the garden at home, I happened upon this winter ‘roost’ of Small Tortoiseshells in the remains of an old wheelbarrow. Here, sheltered from the elements and tucked away out of sight of any predators, they had been seeing out the cold North-east winter. Having noticed them and taken a quick photo, we quickly returned them to a shady spot in the woodshed before they started to stir. Waking up too early can be a fatal mistake for insects such as these.

‘Small Torts’, as they’re affectionately known, also appear regularly in the Forvie workshop in spring, where we usually find them fluttering at the windows on fine days. Having overwintered somewhere in the spacious and unheated building – a perfect place to see out the winter – they often require a helping hand to find their way back outside again.

Aside from insects, it’s also the season for amphibian emergence. All three of Forvie’s resident species – Common Toad, Palmate Newt and Common Frog – will be in evidence this next wee while, commuting from their winter hideouts to their breeding sites in the freshwater pools and lochs across the Reserve. Mind your feet on the tracks and footpaths just now!

Early spring is the time when Forvie’s Grey Seal haul-out reaches its annual numerical peak. As their numbers increase, though, so too does the difficulty of accurately counting them: as we’ve observed in the past, it can be difficult to discern where one seal ends and the next one starts.

We count the seals roughly every second week, ideally at low tide, while viewing the haul-out from the high dunes south of Newburgh village. One such count recently took place immediately before a drone count by seal researcher Claire Stainfield, with whom we share data. My ‘manual’ count – using a telescope, a tally counter and the good old Mk.1 eyeball – produced a total of 1,528 seals, which I thought seemed a bit high. I counted them again, this time without the tally counter, dividing them up instead into blocks of 10. This time I totalled 1,550. I wasn’t especially happy with the accuracy of the count, as the seals were so tightly packed together, so with this caveat added I passed my numbers to Claire.

Later on, Claire informed me that the drone count had revealed a total of 1,558 seals, a difference of just 1.9% from my original ‘manual’ count. Perhaps I should have a little more courage in my convictions!

So that’s the spring of 2026 officially underway then. You heard it here first. Just don’t blame me, though, if it goes all ‘teuchit storm’ on us!

If we were put on the spot, and asked to pick a single theme for each month of the year at Forvie, some months would be easier than others. For instance, wild flowers would be an automatic pick for June, while July would undoubtedly belong to the butterflies and moths. And as it turns out, February is a straightforward one too: this is the month of the year for wildfowl. Both here on the Reserve and throughout the wider region, February is all about the things that honk and quack.

February is a great month for ducks. Like all wildfowl, they pair up in the winter, prior to migrating northwards for the breeding season, and February is peak time for displaying and pair-forming. This means that all our ducks are resplendent in their ‘summer’ breeding plumage right now – unlike, for instance, waders and songbirds, that tend to be dowdy in winter and won’t acquire their attractive colours until spring. So while we don’t generally associate winter wildlife with bright colours, ducks are the notable and honourable exception.

Display among ducks involves an audio as well as a visual component. The drakes (males) of most species have some sort of display-call, which they use in conjunction with their bright plumage and well-rehearsed dance moves in an attempt to impress the ladies. Contrary to this week’s title, of course, ducks don’t just quack; these display-calls vary widely between species, and many of them can sound (to our ears at least) very un-duck-like.

Anyone who’s visited Forvie during winter and spring is probably familiar with the crooning calls of the Eider drakes on the estuary, which reserve manager Catriona describes as sounding like ‘a group of Morningside tea-ladies who have just heard a particularly scandalous piece of gossip’. “Ooooh, he didn’t? Oooooh, he did you know! Ooooooh!“. Judge for yourself though!

The drake Wigeon, meanwhile, gives vent to a splendid glissando whistling call, which when heard in chorus from a big flock makes for a wonderfully musical wall of sound. Individually, it sounds a bit like someone sneezing through a clown’s whistle – but maybe that’s just me.

The tiny Teal, our smallest duck, has a tiny voice to match. The female (who does indeed quack) sounds rather like a Mallard played back at double speed, as if you’d selected the wrong rpm on the record deck. The drake, however, has a delightful cricket-like whistle, which is a familiar sound on Cotehill and Sand Lochs in late winter.

Sand Loch was actually the scene of some duck-related slapstick farce on Monday afternoon. Walking along the road from Collieston up to the Reserve office, I got as far as Sand Loch Corner when something caught my eye on the loch. Upon raising my binoculars, an unforgivable explosion of blasphemy ensued, followed by a 300-metre dash (wearing waterproofs and rigger boots, to the likely amusement of the neighbours) back to our house.

Regular readers will be aware that I’m very keen on my ‘garden list’ – the long list of bird species that I’ve seen from my own property – and of the helpful fact that we overlook about half of Sand Loch from our back garden. Anyway, here on the loch were no fewer than five cracking drake Pochards – an excruciatingly rare species on the local patch these days – and a long, long-awaited ‘garden tick’. I’ve now made that same headlong dash back to the house a number of times (for Common Scoter, Smew, Black-throated Diver, Bee-eater and others besides), and every time I’ve done so, I’ve been reduced to a wheezing wreck at risk of a massive coronary – but it’s been sooooo worth it.

From quackers to honkers now, and wild geese have been a prominent feature of life during this past month. Large flocks have been present by day on the stubble-fields and pasture surrounding the Reserve and northwards into the parish of Slains, and at nightfall they convene to roost either on the estuary or the local lochs. As per usual, the vast majority of the numbers are made up by Pink-footed Geese, winter visitors to our shores from Iceland.

Watching wild geese going about their business is one of life’s pleasures. Wary and unapproachable as they are, it can be difficult to get good views of a flock on the ground, but this past few days we’ve been lucky. This was the view through the ‘scope from the roadside just south of the Collieston crossroads one day last week.

Just like us, geese are sociable and gregarious creatures, and like us they are possessed of strong family ties too. It’s possible within the flock to discern discrete family groups comprising mum, dad and last year’s young, and to note the ‘pecking order’ between families (often in the literal sense). And on top of this, there’s the added spice of seeking out other species hiding among the throngs of Pink-feet.

Last weekend, one particular flock of geese at Slains, just a couple of miles north of the Reserve, contained no fewer than seven species of wild geese. These comprised species from a huge swathe of the northern hemisphere, stretching from North America through Greenland and Iceland to Spitsbergen and arctic Russia – all together in one field in Aberdeenshire. Politically speaking, it’s a strange age we’re living in, and it’s somehow reassuring that nature pays no regard to the borders and boundaries drawn on maps by humanity. Like it or not, we’re inextricably linked to the rest of planet earth – and the geese of Slains are a case in point!

Some of the more unusual geese from faraway lands are easier to spot than others. The white dot in the photo above is the easiest species of all to pick out among the Pinks – a Snow Goose from North America.

Next easiest are the Barnacle Geese, dapper in black and white, which occur regularly in our region in small numbers among their Pink-footed cousins.

Trickier to pick out are the lovely White-fronted Geese from arctic Russia – similar in size and colouration to the Pink-feet, but with a white forehead and pinky bill that give the impression of an ice-cream cornet stuck on the face. Those lovely dark bars across the tummy are a good fieldmark too.

We always like this blog to be a bit interactive, so now it’s your go. How many species of geese are there in the following pic?

I should apologise for the dreadful quality of the photo, which doesn’t make the task any easier – but in fairness, it was taken with a phone camera through the eyepiece of the telescope! Anyway, answer below…

• Blue outline: Greylag Goose, a common breeder in the lochs and glens of northern Scotland. Big and pale, with bubblegum-pink legs and orange beak.
• Red outline: Pink-footed Goose, winter visitor from Iceland. Smallish, with dark head and neck and rose-pink legs.
• Orange outline: Tundra Bean Goose, rare visitor from Russian Arctic. Darker plumage than Pink-footed, with bright jaffa-orange legs.

In the best tradition of all television quizzes, ‘Well done if you got that at home’. If you did, you’re clearly as quackers about honkers as we are. And that, in my opinion, is no bad way to be.

When signing in to commence writing this week’s piece, I was helpfully informed by WordPress that this will be my 271^st post since we started up the Forvie blog in 2019. While this was a slightly scary stat in its own right (How did that happen?! Where has all that time gone?!!), it also prompted a brief moment of reflection. Having written 270 previous posts, I am always acutely conscious of avoiding repetition, and of the need to keep things fresh – though this isn’t generally too difficult in a place like Forvie, where there’s just so much going on.

However, while the thing practically writes itself in some weeks, in others I can find myself scratching around for interesting items with which to construct a cohesive story. This past few weeks, with the relentlessly dull weather and even duller subject matter (“Look, we dug another ditch…”) have been a case in point. So it’s a great relief to me when an obvious theme comes and punches me in the face (not literally of course) – such as this week, when practically all the noteworthy items started with the letter S.

The most notable S, and the chief talking-point among everyone here in the past few days, was the strange celestial phenomenon which we experienced on Thursday and Friday. While I can’t be certain about it, I believe that people more familiar with such things call it ‘sunshine’.

Although we were all immensely relieved that the sun had finally deigned to show its face, the Reserve is still very much in thrall to all the water we’ve received from the heavens this past wee while. While taking the monthly water-level readings from the dipwells on the heath, I was reminded that S also stands for ‘submerged’.

S also stands for ‘soggy’, which is an apt descriptor for much of the Reserve just now. This was the scene from the driver’s seat in the pickup truck on Tuesday, when I traversed the Rockend track from Waterside to the beach. As a driver, it’s at times like these that you cross your fingers, and offer up prayers to the patron saint of blessed rubber door-seals. And lo! the door-seals repelled the water, and Daryl was thankful, and he declared that those door-seals were good.

Unsurprisingly, my arrival at Rockend saw the old fishing-bothy full of water too. A selection of rubbish floating around inside the bothy included, amusingly and appropriately, a large pink buoy which will be repurposed for use on the ternery barrier fence a little later in the year. So it seems that S might also stand for ‘scrounging reserve wardens’. It also unequivocally stands for ‘suitable clothing’, as this was the only litter-pick I’ve ever done that necessitated chest waders.

The bothy was in fact as far as I was able to get with the truck. The same series of storms (more good S words there) that brought all that rain also served to shift countless tons of sand at Rockend, and our vehicle access to the beach has now been emphatically – and perhaps permanently – cut off. The Oldkirk Burn now runs in a deep channel right across the end of the track, with the vertical sand-cliffs on either side rendering the area completely impassable by vehicle.

As ever, we’ll have to roll with the punches thrown by our capricious climate, and come up with another way of getting all the fencing gear down the beach come the spring. But it won’t be easy, and is likely to considerably increase the volume and difficulty of our work. Turns out S also stands for ‘sweary words’, which obviously I won’t reproduce in print here, but suffice to say there have been a few used this week.

Most of the week’s sweary words were in fact reserved for the ‘special’ person (there are many more S words I could have chosen) who dumped three heaps of Japanese Knotweed cuttings at the entrance to the Waulkmill bird hide track. This is absolutely illegal on every level: as if fly-tipping wasn’t bad enough on its own, dumping notifiable waste comprising a highly invasive non-native species onto a nature reserve is the ne plus ultra of another S word – ‘stupidity’.

This represents weapons-grade stupidity on a number of levels, not least because the dumped waste contained roots and rhizomes that would quite happily have re-grown if left in-situ, thus effectively infesting a new location with this pernicious plant.

Depending on what sources you read, Japanese Knotweed costs the UK economy somewhere between £170 million and £1.5 billion per year (!), which includes damage and devaluation of property, and the resultant requirement for difficult and expensive control measures. The bright spark who dumped the stuff at Waulkmill clearly wasn’t willing to take the responsibility for proper disposal, choosing instead to dump it on land owned by you and I – the Scottish taxpayer. Among countless other S words I could use to describe the perpetrator (and not just S words either), ‘selfish’ is one of the few printable ones.

Anyway, it was now up to us to clear it up (sigh) – but a special mention must go to our friend and neighbour Swanny, who happened to be passing by and stopped to help us out. With Swanny’s help we got all the Knotweed removed from the site, and all that remained to be done was to incinerate it safely. By the time we’d finished that particular job, we each smelt like we had a sixty-a-day Woodbine habit. Continuing the week’s theme seamlessly, S also stands for ‘stinking of smoke’.

A much happier story with which to finish up. At the end of the week, the Forvie team – including five of our superstar volunteers – joined up with the Newburgh & Ythan Community Trust and local residents to help clear the blown sand off the boardwalk at Newburgh beach. When I say ‘clear the blown sand’, what I actually mean is shovel about 20 tons (yes, twenty tons) of sand off the wooden structure.

This was proper navvy’s work, but the pleasant sunshine (!!!) and good company helped to speed the job along. What initially looked like a Sisyphean task (now there’s a good S word) soon began to bear fruit, and some good inroads were made before retiring to a local cafe for an excellent coffee and cake, courtesy of the Trust. Now that’s my kind of partnership working!

As I type this, the light is fading at the end of a fine day, and it’s time for me to sign off for the weekend. My work for the week is done, and at this point I am reminded that S also stands for ‘single malt’. See you again next week – cheers!

I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise that since our last update on these pages, we’ve received another seven days of rain and gales at Forvie. The stuck record which we implored the weather gods to change remains stuck, and the conveyor-belt of Atlantic low-pressure systems just keeps rumbling on, hosing us down with yet more rain each day. Thus the first few weeks of 2026 have comprised the longest period of meteorological dross in living memory – but what’s actually going on here?

Apparently the reason for our perpetual waterboarding is the position of the jet stream, which, due to recent cold conditions in North America, is currently pointing right at us. This delivers an endless succession of low-pressure systems across the Atlantic, which manifest themselves in wet and windy weather at this end. Coincident with this, and unfortunately for us, a robust high-pressure system has set solidly over Scandinavia. This has been acting as a bulwark to the approaching lows, preventing them from continuing eastwards and clearing the UK. The net result is the ‘stuck record’ situation we’ve now been experiencing for several weeks.

To put things into some sort of context, the weather station at Aboyne, about forty miles inland of Forvie, recorded approximately four times more rain in January than the long-term average. As if this wasn’t enough, it then received 100% of its average February rainfall within the first six days of the month. Meanwhile, the weather station at Dyce, just twenty miles from Forvie, recorded its longest spell without any sunshine since 1957. In a delicious piece of irony, this was the very year that Johnny Cash released the album containing Folsom Prison Blues, which I paraphrased last week – “I ain’t seen the sunshine…” and all that. You really couldn’t make it up.

Of course, there’s nothing for it on the Reserve but to carry on regardless. We got out around the trails early in the week to check the state of play with water levels, and to see if the paths remained passable. Remarkably, the Heath Trail remains relatively easy to get around, though the bit that we decided to ‘de-declare’ last year is basically now a loch. But follow the waymarkers, and you should be just fine.

The standing water, if it remains for any length of time, will likely bring about changes in the vegetation of Forvie’s coastal heath. Many species of lichens, which lend the heath its characteristic colour and texture, basically get drowned by extended periods of inundation such as we’re seeing this winter. So in the long term, these are likely to be replaced in the low-lying areas of the heath by plants and mosses who are a bit more flood-tolerant. In the meantime, the submerged lichens resemble the Corallina seaweeds in a coastal rockpool, but with a ghost-town sort of feel to them: a drowned world preserved beneath the water’s surface.

While walking the Heath Trail, we happened upon a Short-eared Owl attempting to hunt in the strong winds and rain. Birds like owls really struggle in conditions such as these: the wind makes flying hard work and impairs their ability to hear, while the rain brings poor visibility and the added hazard of soaked plumage from stooping into the wet vegetation. If they can’t feed, and their feathers become saturated, then death from exposure is a real possibility – particularly when the relentless rain makes it difficult to dry out again once wet. It’s bad enough for us, but unlike the poor old wildlife, we can nip home to a warm and dry house for a change of clothes.

Even the waterbirds have been looking a bit dejected: this Grey Heron at Sand Loch summed up the mood of the week just perfectly with its sulky and sullen appearance.

Mid-week saw us take a brief change of scene, making our way south to Loch Leven NNR for a rare in-person gathering of Reserves staff from all over Scotland. Although the landscape and vista were different – and the chance to socialise with far-flung colleagues was refreshingly enjoyable – the weather was just the same as at home.

On the first day of our two-day excursion, we took a boat trip across to one of the small islands in the loch to help erect some Goldeneye nesting-boxes. These are essentially a giant version of the box you might put up in your garden for Blue Tits or House Sparrows, and however unlikely it seems that a duck would use a nesting-box, they do in fact take readily to these convenient new-build homes. Our ‘sister Reserve’ at Muir of Dinnet, for example, has a proud track record for box-nesting Goldeneye, giving this rare breeding bird a real helping hand.

One of the delightful things about the Goldeneye is the ludicrous display of the drake. Among other mad antics, and with a soundtrack of bizarre wheezing noises, he folds himself more-or-less in half in an attempt to impress the ladies. This alone seems a perfectly valid reason to encourage them to nest at Loch Leven. The world, in my opinion, could do with a few more daffy ducks.

Back on the home patch, we had our own ducks with which to concern ourselves. A high-water count of Eiders and Red-breasted Mergansers on the estuary was notable not so much for the numbers of birds, but for the height of the tide. I recently wrote about how Inch Road used to be a natural island in the estuary, and on occasion this week it almost reverted back to its old form again.

On the opposite side of the Foveran Burn, the estuary had invaded the golf course once again, with the rough and fairways festooned with gulls and wildfowl. Not the best afternoon for a quick round of eighteen.

I must admit to having a soft spot for golfers. Just like us birders, they can be utterly and reassuringly bonkers, with an aptitude for going out in the worst conditions imaginable. Sure enough, with chunks of the course disappearing under the salt water, and with sleety rain lashing down sideways, there were still at least a couple of guys out playing the course. Respect!

So that just about draws another sorry and sodden working week to its conclusion. We’re almost considering taking office jobs…

…AL-MOST!!!!!

Only kidding, I promise. See you again this time next week – snorkels and flippers at the ready!

As January rolls around the bend into February, I think all of us here in the North-east are feeling a bit like Johnny Cash in his classic Folsom Prison Blues – “I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when”. We’re now into our fourth week of unbroken high winds, perpetual rain and permanently overcast skies, and at the time of writing the medium-range forecast is for no change until at least mid-month. We might not be stuck in Folsom Prison, but at the moment we do feel stuck in a bit of a rut, the same dreich and dreary groundhog day being replayed over and over and over. In Johnny’s immortal words, time keeps draggin’ on…

During a particularly violent period of gales early in the week, Catriona headed over to the north-eastern boundary of the Reserve at Perthudden with the hand-held anemometer, to try and get an idea of the windspeed. The 61.6 mph she recorded wasn’t actually the strongest gust, but it was the strongest gust in which she could operate the anemometer in one hand and the phone camera in the other, while actually remaining on her feet.

At the opposite end of the Reserve, wind-lashed estuary and beach have been undergoing a good deal of, er, ‘re-modelling’. Seen from the high dunes south of the Ythan mouth, the landscape appeared raw and barren, with wind-drifted sand covering much of the lower-lying grassland.

On the estuary foreshore, the windward-facing dunes bordering the golf course at Newburgh had endured some considerable erosion, with an eight-foot sand cliff having formed in places where the dunes had been undercut. Strong onshore winds allied to high spring tides tend to generate powerful wave action on the shore, invariably leading to erosion on such a dynamic and soft coastline as ours.

The eroded dunes provide an unusual opportunity to see how Marram Grass ‘works’. We often refer to this plant as one of the building-blocks of Forvie, due to its ability to colonise, and thence stabilise, windblown sand. Marram Grass spreads by rhizomes – subterranean stems – which extend outwards in all directions, periodically pushing shoots upwards through the loose sand, each of which then develops into a new tussock. This network of rhizomes knits together the loose substrate, while the tussocks above trap further windblown sand, forming dunes of ever-increasing height. As the sand accumulates, the grass continues growing upwards towards the light, and the eventual result can be dunes of prodigious height – and rhizomes of prodigious length!

As we’re fond of saying here, the powerful forces of wind and tide take with one hand, and give back with the other – meaning that when there’s erosion going on, there’ll be deposition happening somewhere else. While the windward dunes and shores are currently giving up material, so the leeward hollows are accumulating it. Unfortunately, one of the major ‘beneficiaries’, for want of a better word, has been the dune slack which carries the boardwalk to the seal viewpoint at Newburgh beach.

The low-level viewpoint lies immediately north-west of some high and open dunes, and following three weeks of relentless and powerful south-easterly winds, those dunes have marched down to meet it. By Wednesday there must have been between upwards of ten tons of sand smothering the viewpoint, and when (or indeed if?!) these winds finally abate, it’ll be a monumental job to get it all cleared.

The Newburgh & Ythan Community Trust, who own and maintain the boardwalk and viewpoint, have our sympathies – we know all too well the difficulties of maintaining infrastructure in the dynamic landscape of South Forvie – and when the time comes, we’ll be there to help out and do our share of the shovelling. With the excesses of the Christmas break not far behind us, I for one could to with the extra exercise!

All the while, the Grey Seals at the adjacent haul-out have appeared not in the least bit perturbed – even if they were beginning to form dunes of their own as the windblown sand accumulated on the leeward side of their bodies.

In another frustrating week of odd-jobbing and catching up on some reading (some of it obligatory, and some of it actually interesting), I was pleased at least to get the ‘new’ windsurfing information sign installed. This is located at the end of Inch Road, Newburgh, a spot which gives a panoramic view of the lower estuary for our regular waterfowl counts, as well as being a popular launch site for watersports enthusiasts. For the Reserve staff, meeting the needs of both wildlife and human visitors on the Reserve is a perennial balancing act; providing information to visitors about responsible access is a key part of this.

The end of Inch Road was formerly a natural island in the estuary, and it has a long history of use and modification by people. The present-day road causeway is man-made, and the former island itself (now the parking area at the end of the road) carries the remains of various stone walls and structures. This means it’s a very difficult place to dig a decent post-hole for a sign, so I was forced to use some of the random bits of masonry littering the shoreline to form a stone ‘cairn’ around the base of the sign, lending it some extra stability. On lifting one particular stone from the top of the shore, a convention of tiny Shore Crabs scattered in all directions – see how many you can spot in the following photo…

I reckon a minimum of 14 – see the photo below. But even then, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d missed one or two!

This was a vivid illustration of the richness of life in the Ythan Estuary. If there were that many Shore Crabs under one rock, how many must there be on the whole estuary? And that’s just one species: what about all the others – the multitude of molluscs, worms, shrimps, fish and so on? The numbers must be almost incomprehensible. Hardly surprising, then, that the estuary is both nationally and internationally important for the birds that feed upon this smorgasbord of life. All that mud, shingle, sand and water, though it may appear to our eyes a barren wasteland, is actually a precious and irreplaceable natural asset.

It’s no bad thing to be reminded every now and then – as if we needed a reminder – what an awesome local patch we have here at Forvie, even in the dull and dank days of winter. It’s a place simply bursting with life – whatever the weather!

January 2026: picture the scene. First there was the snow. Then some more snow on top of that. Then the thaw, and the inevitable flooding. Then the rain, plenty of rain, just to keep things topped up. So, prior to this week, about the only thing we hadn’t yet had was a raging gale. Hold my beer…

Here at Forvie, an onshore gale set in last weekend, and at the time of writing it’s still lashing our eastward-facing coast. Winter storms are, of course, a fact of life here in the North-east, and on the Reserve it’s a case of adjusting our work to fit the prevailing conditions. There are certain tasks that are rendered impracticable, impossible or just plain dangerous in such conditions, but there’s always a list of jobs kept on the proverbial back burner for times like these. Unfortunately, these jobs tend to be piecemeal, mundane and frequently downright dull – not great ingredients for a thrilling read in the end-of-week blog. But please bear with me, and I’ll try and make up the deficit with some photos and video of the dramatic scenes along the coast during this week’s Stormageddon.

Here’s how things looked from a couple of vantage points around Collieston village, just to the north of the Reserve; these short snippets serve to give an indication of the ferocity of both wind and sea throughout much of the past week.

With outdoor activities somewhat restricted this week – and with an attendant risk of cabin fever setting in – I found myself holed up in the workshop for a couple of days, catching up with some maintenance tasks. As I say, this stuff doesn’t exactly make for great copy, but it is nevertheless essential work in the running of the Reserve, and it all contributes to keeping Forvie at its best for both wildlife and visitors.

Note in the photo below the red kneeling mat, kindly provided by former reserve manager Annabel, which is the sole reason that I still have functioning knee joints after nineteen years of servicing machinery on a cold concrete floor in the middle of winter!

One of the ‘cabin’ jobs was to resurrect the windsurfing sign, which had gone missing last year only to turn up in a lay-by on Loch Ness-side. While the story of how it ended up there remains a complete mystery, it was at least returned to us more or less undamaged, and could be re-used. What it lacked was a wooden frame; the special person who removed the sign in the first place had apparently used the previous frame for their camp-fire. Takes all sorts, apparently.

Thankfully this was a straightforward piece of construction (“We’re not cabinet-making here” is my constant refrain to Forvie’s seasonal staff / volunteers / apprentices when approaching a basic joinery task), and the new sign was soon ready to be returned to its rightful place beside the estuary at Inch Road in Newburgh.

With this week’s weather proving trying for us humans, how must it be for Forvie’s wildlife? The simple answer is that some species are far better adapted to deal with storm conditions than others. Our Grey Seals, for instance, are super tough, and are able to take the high winds, high seas and vicious sand-blow in their stride. The most they’ll have to do is to adjust their choice of haul-out site: often in an easterly wind, the seals tend to congregate in the mouth of the Ythan, in the lee of the dunes. In calm conditions or an offshore wind, by contrast, they favour the more open beach on the seaward side of the Forvie peninsula.

While marine mammals make light work of stormy conditions, life must be a good deal harder for some of our terrestrial mammals. Predators such as Foxes and Badgers rely heavily on their sense of smell for navigation and locating food, and detecting any scent is likely to be much more difficult in high winds than in calm weather. Like me in my workshop, they might be just as well to remain indoors, in their earths or setts respectively, and wait for better foraging conditions before venturing out.

Birds are a mixed bag in terms of their reaction to the storm too. Passing by Sand Loch, we noticed a hint of waterfowl movement this week, with a fine drake Goldeneye and several Red-breasted Mergansers dropping in at various points. Both of these species are diving ducks, obtaining their food beneath the choppy surface of the loch, so they’re able to carry on feeding quite happily despite the storm raging above.

It’s a far tougher gig for seabirds though. Even though most of our winter seabirds, such as auks (Guillemots, Razorbills and the like), also dive for food, the sea is a much less hospitable environment than the lochs favoured by the aforementioned ducks. Apart from having to contend with the sheer physical power of the swell, the birds are also faced with churned-up, turbid (cloudy) water, preventing them from seeing their favoured fish prey. The fish themselves, meanwhile may even retreat to the more sheltered depths, out of range of the birds. This all adds up to poor feeding, and if the rough conditions persist for more than a few days, the spectre of starvation looms large.

Shags, of which a tiny handful of pairs breed at Forvie each summer, are particularly susceptible to winter storms. Our friends at the Grampian Ringing Group reckoned that the Shag population in North-east Scotland was reduced by more than 80% following a recent stormy winter; we’ll have to wait until summer to see how they’ve fared this time around.

Speaking of seabirds and fish, we recently found this little fellow washed up on the beach just south of Rockend. I initially took this to be a Sprat, a common ‘bait fish’ in our waters and a favoured food of many seabirds, but a bit of research indicated that it’s more likely a European Anchovy – note the pointed little snout, and the gape of the mouth extending well behind the eye.

Anchovies are known to be present in the northern North Sea in various isolated locations, and are thought to be increasing in both range and numbers as our sea temperatures steadily rise. Who knows, Forvie’s terns may be dining on Anchovies rather than Sand-eels in future seasons!

This is, however, just speculation, and the way a certain species will react to climate change is about as unpredictable as the weather itself. But if current predictions hold true, we’re likely to experience a lot more stormy weather as time goes on.

As I type this the gale is still raging outside, but I can’t bear to be stuck indoors a minute longer. Fetch my boots and coat, I’m away out. See you again next week!

Following Danny’s farewell to Forvie at the end of 2025, the second week of the new year saw the remaining Reserve staff back in the saddle once again. The first half of the week in question was cool rather than cold, with a major thaw having taken place since the last posting on these pages, and the Reserve was unrecognisable from just seven days previously. Even so, a few stubborn patches of snow remained in sheltered spots and shady hollows, prompting one or two local old-timers to suggest that “it’s wytin’ for mair” (=waiting for more). I suppose only time will tell!

On Monday we divided our staff resources (i.e. one of us to each half of the Reserve) in order to carry out a check of all the footpaths and infrastructure following the festive lay-off. While water levels were predictably high following the melting of a foot of snow – never mind the rain we’ve since received – the Heath Trail footpath remains passable even in ordinary footwear. This serves as a vindication for our re-routing of the trail last winter: in stark contrast to the dry ‘new’ route, negotiating the ‘old’ trail this week would have required either chest-waders or a small boat.

The real up side of this is that we can now leave the wetlands on this part of the heath to continue developing naturally, creating lots of habitat for a wide variety of water-loving wildlife. On the Reserve, as in life, we try to avoid fighting against nature as far as we possibly can, preferring instead to work with the natural changes taking place around us. Ultimately, it’s up to us to adapt to our environment, rather than forcing the environment to accommodate us!

While walking the ‘new’ section of Heath Trail past the seaward side of the Coastguard’s Pool, I spied a sorry collection of feathers among the tangled grasses. Closer inspection revealed them to have belonged to a Woodcock, possibly a cold-weather refugee who had fallen foul of some predator or another (and hopefully not just an off-lead dog, but it can and does happen).

Later in the week we saw a live Woodcock near Cotehill Loch, being pursued in flight by three Carrion Crows. One of the crows managed to catch the hapless Woodcock by the foot, at which point we thought ‘game over’, but somehow it wriggled free and the chase continued. As the birds dipped over the horizon, we were left wondering about the final outcome, though we were of course rooting for the Woodcock.

Carrion Crows are generalist predators and scavengers, and aren’t finely tuned for catching and killing smaller birds. Other more specialised predators tend to make a ‘cleaner’ job of it: the powerful talons of a falcon, for example, tend to result in a quick kill, while perhaps the ultimate in ‘humane dispatch’ is a shrike, whose sharp bill delivers a swift and terminal nip to the back of its victim’s neck. Crow predation, however, somehow has an air of gangland violence about it, especially when multiple assailants are involved; as such we were relieved not to witness the probable demise of the poor old Woodcock.

All of this was a vivid demonstration of the vulnerability of slow-flying birds like Woodcock in open environments during daylight, which is precisely where they find themselves when frozen out of their usual woodland haunts by hard weather. This is why they generally operate at night, and spend the daylight hours snuggled down in the leaf litter, relying on their beautiful camouflage for protection from predatory crows and the like.

Contrary to forecast, Tuesday started wet, and continued wetter still. Just what we needed on top of all that snow-melt. What’s more, we had a wretched wader count to do, which always seems to coincide with a downpour and/or a gale.

As so often happens, the rain cleared at the tail-end of the job, leaving an annoyingly beautiful evening following our earlier soaking. C’est la vie!

Our most unusual ‘spot’ during the account was actually a bit of flotsam washed up on the shores of the estuary. In common use worldwide, plastic 45-gallon drums wash up fairly regularly here, and the clean and intact ones can be recycled into useful things like water-butts for the garden. With this in mind, we recovered the drum in question, but noticed that it was lettered with the address of a house… in Malvern, Jamaica! Whether it had floated the 5,000 or so miles across the Atlantic, or been ‘ship-assisted’ in the manner of various American birds to reach western Europe, we’ll never know. While this discovery was handy in giving me an excuse for this week’s title, the only minor disappointment was that it wasn’t full of Caribbean rum!

On Thursday we headed down to the ternery (aaaaaaarrrrrgghhh – surely not that time already?!) to check out the lie of the land following recent high winds, and to case the upcoming strimming job wherein we clear away all the previous season’s dead vegetation. This was a particularly fine afternoon to be out and about, and South Forvie looked splendid in the winter sun.

This was also an opportunity to inspect and maintain the infrastructure in that part of the Reserve, including the seasonal signage pertaining to the Grey Seal haul-out at the Ythan mouth.

The highlight of our trip to the ternery was undoubtedly the little flock of Twite, comprising about 60 individuals (plus a couple of Linnets for company), which were frequenting the vacant Sandwich Tern colony. I’m sure this was nothing to do with the delicious seed bait laid down by Grampian Ringing Group members in an attempt to capture them for an ongoing ringing study! Nothing at all…

In any case, it was a delight to see (and hear) them going about their business. Twite are in my opinion underrated little birds, with subtly attractive plumage and a gentle gregarious nature. Their common name is basically an onomatopoeic rendering of their call, while the specific part of their scientific name Linaria flavirostris literally means ‘yellow-nosed’, a reference to the yellow beak – which also makes for a handy fieldmark to distinguish your Twite from your Linnet.

Thereafter the working week ended with a sharp frost on Friday morning, which persisted through the day. At Waulkmill, miniature ice-floes could be seen making their way serenely down a becalmed River Ythan, while Logie Buchan reedbed looked pretty as a picture under the evening sky.

An agreeable end, then, to a productive week back at work – it was like we’d never been away!

By the time this article goes to (electronic) press, the sun will have set on the shortest day of 2025. Tomorrow, we’ll have a barely-perceptible extra couple of minutes of daylight, and a couple more the following day, and so it goes on. It seems unbelievable, here at the tail-end of the year, that we’ve now commenced the long climb to the summit of 2026, when it’ll be all terns and butterflies and sunburn (well, hopefully anyway). But that’s the truth: it all starts here!

This past week was our last full working week before the festive break, and as is always the case, it involved a lot of tying-up of loose ends prior to the holidays. We’ve always found that we enjoy our leave from work a lot more if we’ve successfully ‘cleared the decks’ before knocking off, and not left a mountain of unfinished tasks to be tackled upon our return. Or maybe it’s just down to my utter loathing of half-done work!

With this in mind, I set off on an exceptionally mild and grey Monday morning to Cotehill Loch, to complete the last piece of drainage work of the 2025 season. The job involved maintaining a drain coming onto the Reserve from our neighbours’ property – another fine example of the glamour of our working lives – but a nice straightforward task nonetheless. And after the chaos of last week, straightforward was just what the doctor ordered.

The only exceptional thing about the job was the temperature, which was well into double figures, and just felt a bit wrong for December. Having removed several layers of clothing and hung them on the nearby fence, I was soon into my work, not forgetting to take the obligatory ‘before and after’ photies.

Regular readers could be forgiven for thinking that we’re a wee bit fixated with ditches and spades here during the autumn and winter (Really? Moi?? Surely not). Right enough, we do disproportionately enjoy this sort of work; perhaps it’s the fact you can actually see a result in real time, or maybe it’s just the child in us all coming out (I mean who didn’t like splashing around in the mud as a bairn?). But in truth, we don’t like to do any more drainage work than we absolutely have to – simply because wildlife loves wet places.

As a neat case in point, the ditch that I was working in flows into a soakaway pool, which we unofficially refer to as the ‘duck pond’. This dries out completely in summer, but holds water during the winter after prolonged periods of rain.

The ‘duck pond’ is small, barely the size of a tennis court (though I’m not sure how it compares to that SI unit of water volume, the Olympic swimming pool). However, upon my arrival, up rose a pair of Mallards, eight Teal and a Snipe, all of whom were enjoying the delights of this tiny piece of flooded land. And that’s why we do as little draining as we can get away with!

During the course of the job, I was overflown by a couple of noisy, lively skeins of Pink-footed Geese tracking southwards parallel with the coast. Little movements like this are sometimes (but not always) associated with the onset of colder weather…

…and sure enough, the following day dawned bright, sharp and frosty.

What a transformation a little frost can bring to a landscape. From the grey and dank scene of the previous day, the overnight freeze turned the Reserve into a giant Christmas card. Season’s greetings indeed!

The pre-holiday period is when a lot of the Reserve’s infrastructure, machines and tools get a bit of TLC. We do most of this ourselves – the straightforward stuff like sharpening saws and blades, doing the oil change on the mowers, and cleaning and greasing everything that moves (yes, including the staff) – yet more of the mundane but essential work that keeps the Reserve functioning.

While at the bench vice sharpening a brushcutter blade, I was startled by a sudden whirr of wings, and my hair was parted by a House Sparrow which had popped under the roofing slates and into the workshop. After a few choice words on my part, the trespasser was gently evicted through the door, and the wisdom of the Venerable Bede was brought to mind. According to the sage, life is like the sparrow, briefly coming in from the cold of winter, only to be booted out again immediately by the warden. Or something along those lines anyway – look it up for yourselves!

There are other jobs, however, that are beyond the skill set and pay grade of either Reserve staff or sparrows. Such as carrying out the annual service on the wind turbine at the Forvie Centre, which took place on Tuesday afternoon. As part of this process, the turbine is lowered to the ground by hydraulic ram to allow access to the moving bits, and for that short while on Tuesday evening the skyline at the Forvie Centre looked oddly featureless.

With both dawn and dusk occurring during working hours on these short December days, we are able to jam in on the morning and evening ‘commute’ of some of our wildlife. Gulls are some of the more obvious ‘commuters’; many thousands spend the night roosting on the safe inshore waters of Aberdeen Bay, then heading inland at dawn in wavering, ragged flocks to feed on ploughed fields, flood-meadows and pasture. In the evening they can be seen making the return journey, often against a colourful sky, and represent an evocative reminder of the rhythm of life in the natural world.

On the dark mornings we may even bump into nocturnal species who are yet to turn in for the day, and on my way to the Cotehill ditches on Monday I was lucky to cross paths with a splendid dog Fox. Although this species is one of my nemeses in the summer, when we’re sweating blood on the Reserve in trying to protect our precious ground-nesting birds, I must admit it’s always a thrill to see a Fox at the other end of the year.

Any readers who frequent the Forvie Facebook page might already be aware of a campaign being run by the Shark Trust – the Great Eggcase Hunt – wherein they are appealing to beachgoers to look for the egg cases of the Flapper Skate. This large member of the ray family is classed as Critically Endangered by IUCN, having been driven to extinction in parts of its range by overfishing. The species became legally protected from commercial fishing in 2009, though they are still popular quarry for sport-anglers on a catch-and-release basis. While keen anglers are realistically the only folk likely to come into contact with an actual Flapper Skate, ordinary beachgoers like you and I can still look out for the large, leathery egg-cases washed up on the shore, and report them via the link above. Something to think about while you’re out on the beach walking down the Christmas dinner!

So with the working year all but done, it remains only for me to raise a glass and wish all our readers a happy and restful festive period, as we begin to look ahead to a hopeful, peaceful and wildlife-filled new year. Cheers and good health!

‘Start as you mean to go on’, so my old folks used to tell me. In other words, if you set about a task with a positive attitude and a determined mindset, you’ll be able to see it through with relative ease. Experience has since shown that the same can apply in reverse, whereby a bad start can set the tone for an ongoing litany of disaster. In a minor way, this past week was a bit of a case in point, though I won’t bore you here with all the things that have gone awry. But you just know that a great working week lies ahead when you’re already soaked to the skiddies by ten o’clock on a Monday morning.

As it turned out, Monday morning was the only available time slot to carry out the fortnightly waterfowl census on the estuary, so it was a bit unfortunate that it coincided precisely with a band of heavy rain arriving from the south. This was the sort of rain from which no amount of waterproof gear can totally save you. Our works-issue jackets and overtrousers usually perform pretty well for the most part, but on Monday they were found wanting, and by mid-morning we were already in need of a complete – and I mean complete – change of clothing. But, as Frank famously sang, that’s life.

Seriously wet conditions aren’t at all helpful for these waterfowl counts. Firstly, all the floodwater in neighbouring fields creates lots of lovely temporary habitat for ducks and waders, thus tempting the birds off the estuary and onto places where we can’t see (or count) them. Indeed, in some places it was hard to tell where the estuary ended and the ‘dry land’ started. And secondly, all that rain renders your optical equipment practically unusable. By the midway point of the count, I wasn’t sure if it was the telescope or my actual eyeballs steaming up.

What little wildlife we were able to see included some lovely fresh-plumaged ducks, notably the Wigeon and Teal which frequent the creeks and saltmarshes bordering the estuary. These are chiefly winter visitors to our shores, though small numbers of both species do breed in Scotland, with Teal having done so on the Reserve in the past. Teal are the smallest of our ducks, and arguably among the most attractive too. That said, the drake Wigeon is similarly handsome, and both species are at their very best just now, having recently moulted into fresh breeding plumage in preparation for the new year.

By the end of the count, a somewhat insulting glimmer of sunshine had appeared, heralding the passing of the rain and a clearance into a fine afternoon. At least a second change of clothes wouldn’t be required today!

Later in the week, on the Thursday afternoon, I had the pleasure of delivering an illustrated talk to the Banchory and Deeside U3A, a lovely group of interested and interesting people, on the subject of migration at Forvie and beyond. This was due to kick off at 1330 hours, so the preceding morning offered a good chance (or so I thought) of completing a minor piece of estate work in South Forvie.

In late October, Storm Amy had damaged the ‘Black Tern’ waymarker on the Dune Trail, which had to be recovered to the workshop for repair. With the necessary repairs having been completed earlier in the week, reinstating the Black Tern would be a nice easy job (or so I thought) to fill in an hour or two (or so I thought) prior to my excursion to Banchory. So off I went in the pickup truck – but on arrival at Rockend, where the track across the Reserve pops out onto the beach, I rather irritably discovered that Storm Bram (presumably Amy’s cousin) had done a fine job on Tuesday night of rearranging the scenery.

My attempts to navigate the most suitable-looking route down onto the beach soon landed me in trouble. The wind-drifted sand was extremely soft in places, and as quick as you can say “bottomed out”, the truck was sitting squarely on its transmission with all four wheels spinning. A good half-hour of digging, sweating and cursing later, and still it was going nowhere – and the 1330 start was looming ever nearer. For only the third time in 20-odd years of off-road driving, I was forced to swallow both my personal and professional pride, and call for assistance.

To my eternal gratitude, neighbouring farmer Andy answered the SOS call, and was soon on the scene to give me a helping tow. Red-faced but relieved, I set out on the road to Banchory, and arrived at my destination with approximately a minute and a half to spare before the start of my talk, whereupon I had to apologise for my last-minute arrival and somewhat dishevelled appearance. The U3A folks were very understanding, and kindly remarked that it at least added a bit of authenticity to proceedings. Amen to that!

Anyway, after all that excitement(!), the wretched Black Tern still hadn’t been returned to its rightful place. Having stowed it safely in the dunes at Rockend prior to my rescue by Andy, I returned the following morning to complete the job. With vehicle access to the beach now known to be impossible, there was nothing for it but ‘pick up thy tern and walk’. This provided the bonus of a couple of amusing conversations with nonplussed visitors, with me trying to make out that taking a giant tern on a ten-foot pole for a walk along the beach was the most natural thing in the world.

Thankfully the job itself was, as hoped, quick and easy, and the Black Tern flies again – at least until the next destructive storm anyway. Fingers crossed.

On the long walk down the beach and back, I was kept company by a flock of Sanderlings, busily working the strand-line like little clockwork toys, dashing in and out between the waves to snatch morsels of food deposited by the sea.

Even at noon – the high point of the day – the shadows fell long across the beach. This is a reminder that the winter solstice is just around the corner, and from this lowest ebb of the year, those shadows will soon be shortening once again.

The final noteworthy event upon which to report this week was the Vols’ Bash – that is to say, a festive end-of-season lunch for our volunteers and colleagues, and a chance for us to offer a vote of thanks for all their efforts through the year. Some lovely fare was on offer, including home-made caramel shortbread, tea loaf and even a Guinness cake. Unlike the bird count earlier in the week, there were no soggy bottoms here!

And so an eventful week has come to an end. I’m not one to complain, but can I have a boring week next time around please?…