“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!

Well, that’s not totally true. We did have to test the benches we were helping install at our ‘sister reserve’, Muir of Dinnet NNR, on Monday. Unfortunately, when you work with the public, you have to think “what’s the silliest thing someone could possibly do with this piece of reserve infrastructure”, multiply it by 10, and plan accordingly. Consequently, Simon had purchased some lovely new benches, but these needed their feet dug a good 75cm into the ground to make them properly immovable.

As we’re remarked in the past, digging at Dinnet is an awful lot different to digging here at Forvie. We are blessed with sand here, which is at least easy to dig into, and it’s not too big a job to excavate even quite a deep hole. However, that is not the case on the glacial soils at Dinnet, where they have a fine selection of stones, boulders and occasional patches of bedrock to contend with. We definitely needed a seat by the time the bench was installed!

The following day, we welcomed a group of pupils and staff from St Margaret’s School for a day’s fieldwork and a guided tour of South Forvie. Among the topics for discussion were vegetation succession and how sand dunes are formed. This was ably demonstrated on the day by the weather, with a cold wind blowing tons of sand around and making for some slightly uncomfortable working conditions – but at least the sun shone for us!

Then it was off to Newburgh for a look at the grey seal haul-out, and to have a go at some ethograms (studies of animal behaviour), before the class headed back into Aberdeen to thaw out!

Our grey seal numbers are peaking around now, with over 2,000 counted last week. This is a real wildlife spectacle on our own doorstep, with the sights, sound and indeed smell of the seals being a real feast for the senses (well, okay, maybe not the smell – as one visitor commented “it doesn’t half give you the boak” *). The seals really come here to basically chill out and grow new fur after breeding elsewhere, so they are spending lots of time out of the water. And scratching – it’s an itchy old business, growing a new waterproof coat.

* for non-Scots readers – this translates as “it makes one feel nauseous”, while the local Doric variant is more like “it fair gies ye the byock”. Glad we’ve cleared that one up.

While heading along the estuary to continue with our work on the tern fence, we were treated to the sight of the ‘bog park’ field almost blue with geese. As per usual, most of these were pink-footed geese, but tucked in the flock were a couple of Russian white-fronted geese. There have been a lot of these seen across the whole UK this winter, possibly pushed here by the easterly winds earlier in the year, or maybe escaping harsher conditions on the continent. As any birder will tell you, picking through a goose flock is one of life’s pleasures, a sort of avian ‘Where’s Wally?’ as you try and find something rare in with the ‘regular’ geese.

Tuesday night saw us making a rare trip into the big smoke (well, Aberdeen) to deliver a talk to the RSPB local group. We’ve often said the only constant is change, and this was a big part of what we were talking about on Tuesday – be it increased storminess, coastal erosion or the way wildlife will (or won’t) adapt to our changing climate. It was also a chance to update everyone on how the terns did last year, and generally spread the good word about how we need nature. As this was out last public event of the financial year, we sat down and totted up how many people we’d engaged with at events and talks since last April, and were both surprised and delighted when it came to over 1,000! Not bad for a bunch of socially-awkward, misanthropic reserve staff!

Speaking of increased storminess, we certainly took a battering towards the end of the week. The wind picked up through Wednesday and drove rain showers ahead – which did make for some nice rainbows. In fact, the picture pretty much sums up the day – blue sky and sun or tipping rain…and not much in between.

By Thursday, the gale had properly hit. Yet again, you couldn’t stand upright at the top of Perthudden, and even small flooded patches had whitecaps. When I took my cuppa outside to get stuff out the shed, I’d swear there was a swell on it too!

The seas here are always at their most impressive in an easterly or south-easterly. Whipped into a frothy fury by the wind, the waves pound the coastline and churn the shallows into spume.

We’re often asked if the sea foam is a result of pollution. While it can result from pollution, it’s generally a natural phenomenon. It’s caused when naturally-occurring dissolved organic matter in the sea is agitated by wave action and forms bubbles. In a big easterly, it can coat the cliffs and you even see chunks blown several hundreds of metres inland.

But the rough weather doesn’t stop the wildlife. Now spring is here, many creatures are on a clock of their own, to breed and produce the next generation. While the rough weather on Thursday wouldn’t make most people amorous, that’s not true of everyone…

…and dozens of toads were on the move!

Big ones, little ones, male ones, female ones, they were everywhere! Responding to some signal of day length or temperature, they were on the march, heading for traditional spawning grounds. Many frogs and toads will head back to the same pond where they themselves were hatched, with some travelling anything between one and five kilometres to get there. That’s a long way if you’ve only got toad-length legs!

Here at Forvie a great many of the toads will be heading for the Coastguard’s Pool. It was almost impossible to walk around it without nearly treading on a toad. While it was a bit windy to hear them, on a stiller day you can hear them proop-ing and chirping with excitement as the males compete for the females. It won’t be long until we see spawn in the pools, but if you do see any, it’ll probably be frogspawn rather than toadspawn. Toadspawn tends to be in strings rather than clumps, and is generally laid in deeper water, wrapped around the vegetation.

I reckon that’s enough excitement for one week – time for a well-earned sit down! See you again next week.

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.