The second week of August at Forvie started with the final dismantling and recovery of the ternery electric fence. We’d made a good head-start the previous week, removing the batteries, switchgear and two kilometres(!) of steel wire. Monday, however, saw us lifting and shifting the majority of the fencing and its various accoutrements, and returning them to storage, ready for the whole process to begin once again next spring.

The packing-up routine is familiar: ternery to beach, beach to pickup truck, pickup truck to workshop, workshop to loft. Unfortunately for us, familiarity alone doesn’t make the fencing any lighter or easier to move, and we were very grateful for the help of volunteers Elaine and Richard, and our colleagues Simon and Gordon from Muir of Dinnet NNR.

With the last of the breeding terns departed, and the fencing taken down and safely returned to the workshop, it was thence time to dismantle the barrier fence and reopen South Forvie to the public once again. This was undertaken on Wednesday, with Elaine and Richard again putting in a magnificent shift to help us get everything in order. By mid-afternoon it was job done, and smiles all round.

In between our two days of fencing, we squeezed in a public event: a guided walk along a short section of the estuary to look at some of Forvie’s birds, and how to go about identifying them. The date and location had thus been chosen because August is a great month for wading birds on the Ythan. Sure enough, we saw plenty of waders: Curlew, Turnstone, Golden Plover and so on. However, for many of our attendees, these were totally upstaged by two Ospreys fishing at Waterside – indeed, we saw both successfully catch a fish before we had even set off on our walk. Hopefully this helped to compensate for the massive soaking we all then received from a sudden and extremely heavy rain shower.

The week in fact held not one but two public events, with a beach clean taking place on Thursday in association with East Grampian Coastal Partnership. Though the turnout was modest, the assembled team worked hard to remove all the rubbish from both the estuary foreshore and the seaward beach at Forvie. An endless task, but a rewarding one nevertheless.

Most beach cleaning days produce one or two unusual, noteworthy or amusing finds, and we often run a light-hearted competition to decide the best of these. This time round, though, there was surely only one contender for ‘find of the day’. Top marks to intrepid beach-cleaner Clive for unearthing this particular gem – though it’s funny how, in common with washed-up shoes, you never seem to find a matched pair.

Remind you of anyone?

A spare hour on the morning of the beach clean allowed me to have a quick dash round the heath, in order to record the monthly water-level readings from the dipwells. En-route, the heath itself was beginning to look the part, with the heather approaching its colourful best.

Of course, it’s not just the one type of heather that turns the heath a shimmering purple in late summer each year. What follows, then, is a quick recap on Forvie’s three species of heather. First up is Common Heather, or Ling, the most abundant and widespread of the three:

Next up is the powder-pink Cross-leaved Heath, which favours the wetter areas of the heath:

Lastly, Bell Heather, which favours the drier areas, and whose flowers are a deeper purple than the other two species.

In addition to the blooming heathers, the other abundant dwarf shrub in evidence is Crowberry. Now is the time that it produces its shiny black fruits, adding further colour and texture to the rich tapestry of the heath.

The aforementioned dipwells each consist of a long pipe sunk vertically into the ground, into which the discerning hydrologist (or indeed dogsbody estate-worker) may insert a tape-measure to read off the groundwater level. Experience has shown that these are very difficult to find during periods of flooding or snow cover; consequently a few years ago I drove in a wooden stake next to each dipwell to help us locate them. Naturally, Forvie’s wildlife has been quick to take advantage of these additions to the landscape – the Roe Deer use them for scratching, scent-marking and removing the velvet from their antlers, while the birds of the heath treat them as a convenient perch.

In looking at the photo above, you may have noticed a large feather on the ground by the dipwell and stake. This is a clue as to who has been using this particular stake as a lookout perch…

The combination of white and ginger ground colours, the coarse dark barring at the distal end, and most notably the super-soft edges to the feather tell us that this was left behind by a Short-eared Owl. These birds are scarce visitors to Forvie, their lives bound up with the fortunes of their main prey, the Short-tailed Vole. Vole populations tend to operate in boom-and-bust cycles; in a year when they’re scarce here, so are the owls. But in a big ‘vole year’, we may see up to ten or twelve Short-eared Owls on the Reserve at any one time.

The owls tend to arrive on our coast during September and October, particularly if an easterly tailwind gives them a helping hand across the North Sea from Scandinavia. And if they arrive to find an abundance of voles, they will stay for the winter. Who knows what this coming autumn may bring?

Indeed, one of the exciting things about autumn at Forvie is its unpredictability. The forthcoming season has the potential to produce some of the best wildlife watching of the entire year. The summer may be starting to wind down, but for those of us with an interest in the natural world, there’s a lot to smile about.

August is a month of great change here at Forvie, as it is in the natural world throughout the northern hemisphere. Climatically speaking we’re still very much in summer; the days are long and (sometimes) hot, everything green is growing, flowering and fruiting profusely, and there is an abundance of insect life in particular. In other respects though, we have already passed a milestone in the year, and life on the Reserve has a very different ‘feel’ than it did a month ago.

One of the most noticeable changes is the winding-down of the bird breeding season. While some species are still busily engaged raising young, many have now finished their labours for the year, and consequently the whole atmosphere about the Reserve has changed. The estuary, coast, heath and scrub are now awash with juvenile birds making their first forays into the world, alongside the scruffy and careworn adults now going through their post-breeding moult. For them, this post-breeding period is the equivalent of our lie-down-in-a-darkened-room after a particularly hectic week at work.

After the season we’ve had, what with the avian ‘flu epidemic added to the usual mayhem of high summer, we’d quite enjoy a lie down in a darkened room ourselves. However, the end of the bird breeding season means another period of hard yakka: the dismantling and recovery of all the fencing and associated equipment from the ternery. We hope to have this wrapped up by mid-August, at which point we will re-open South Forvie to the public once again. As ever, we are extremely grateful to everyone who has respected the temporary access restriction during the breeding season – the continued survival of the tern colony depends upon your goodwill in this respect.

In the meantime, the last few Common Terns continue to fledge from the colony, and their imminent departure will mark the end of the 2023 ternery season – much to our relief.

Last week saw us ‘borrowed’ off the Reserve to help tackle the problem of Himalayan Balsam growing along the Foveran Burn. This small watercourse flows into the Ythan Estuary at Newburgh, and for many years we have been pulling up Himalayan Balsam along its lower reaches, trying to prevent this invasive species getting a foothold. However, some good detective work last summer allowed us to find the upstream source of the Balsam: if we can eradicate it here, it’ll be problem solved. So we knew exactly where to start this time around.

A dried-up pond in the wooded policies of a house was found to be dense with Balsam, and we initially doubted whether our small team – Forvie staff Catriona and Daryl, die-hard volunteer Richard, and Mirella from Scottish Invasive Species Initiative – would be able to tackle it. But a fine session of ripping, slashing and pulling resulted in an apocalyptic scene of vegetation devastation – and plenty of job satisfaction to boot.

Check out this top technique with the weed-slasher. If Catriona ever challenges you to a round of golf, mind and take your crash helmet.

Dry pond cleared out, we then worked downstream, ripping and slashing our way along the edges of the burn before arriving triumphally in Newburgh. And yes, it was all just as much fun as it looks in the photos.

While the weekday staff have been enjoying their diet of nettles and ditchwater, the weekend contingent have had their own duties to attend to. Danny and Robert organised a public ‘Seal Watch’ event last Sunday at Newburgh beach, and during the course of the afternoon spoke to no fewer than 225 beach-goers. As well as showing them the seals and other wildlife through their telescopes, our weekend wardens were also able to answer questions about all aspects of Forvie and its wildlife. They even managed to spot a Harbour Seal, allowing for a great comparison with Forvie’s much-more-numerous Grey Seals. Good job, gents.

At the start of this week’s missives, we mentioned the abundance of plant and insect life on the Reserve in the month of August, and the following photo sums this up perfectly. A Six-spot Burnet moth on a Bluebell flower is such a classic late-summer Forvie scene that it’s almost cliched. Who cares though – here we go…

The other insect of the moment is the Cinnabar moth – or rather its instantly-recognisable caterpillar. This species only colonised Forvie as recently as 2009, its distribution extending steadily northwards as our climate warms. Up until now, Cinnabars have been slowly increasing on the Reserve, forming scattered colonies along the coast path and estuary where their food plant, Ragwort, can be found. However, this year a change has occurred, and for the first time in Forvie’s history, they are really abundant. This may be due to the hot dry summer of 2022 which led to a productive breeding season, or possibly because they have finally ‘discovered’ the vast stands of Ragwort that grow at the ternery each summer. Check out any Ragwort you come across, and there’s a fifty-fifty chance you may see some Cinnabar caterpillars busily munching away.

To end this week’s piece, I will once again hang my hat on the extraordinary work of local photography legend Ron Macdonald. Ron has a habit of taking photos that either 1) we’ve been trying to take for years, and have never managed; or 2) that we’d never have a hope of taking in the first place. We’re very grateful therefore to Ron for his ongoing support in providing outstanding images for use in the Forvie blog.

This first photo fits neatly into category 1. We’ve been trying for ages to get a decent comparison shot of two oft-confused wading birds, Curlew and Whimbrel, in order to illustrate how to tell the two species apart. The key differences are the size, bill length and curvature, and the markings about the head and ‘face’. Ron has captured these features perfectly in this recent shot.

This next species is a personal favourite of mine. Arctic Skuas are the pirates of the seabird world, making a living from casual larceny. Rather than catch fish for themselves, they prefer to steal from other seabirds such as gulls and terns. With the Ythan Estuary playing host to many migrating terns in late summer – as well as the last few breeders just next door at the ternery – it’s a rich hunting ground for these dashing ‘falcons of the sea’. This last week has seen at least three individuals plying their trade on the estuary and adjacent coastline.

Arctic Skuas are athletic birds: fast fliers with unbelievably quick reactions allied to supreme manoeuvrability, which makes them hugely enjoyable to watch. It also makes them hugely difficult to photograph, making Ron’s capture in this instance all the more impressive.

Finally, a local favourite: a fishing Osprey. This is a great month to see Ospreys on the estuary, as the young are on the wing and busy learning how to fish in the company of their parents. The lucky observer in August may see three or four Ospreys in the air together over the Ythan – and, if you’re in the right place at the right time, you might see one make a successful plunge into the estuary to emerge with a flatfish. Surely one of Scotland’s great wildlife spectacles?

That’s us into August at Forvie then – dull it isn’t.

This week I’ll be talking about the Atlantic puffin (binomen Fratercula arctica), which is sometimes named the ‘Common puffin’ and sentimentally called ‘The Sea Parrot’ or ‘Clown of the Sea’. This species is not usually associated with Forvie, but has been recorded here recently. Readers will remember Catriona’s recent blog Life on the Edge – Forvie NNR, which ended optimistically with a photograph of a puffin that we encountered on the annual Seabird Nesting Census. This was really exciting news, as it was the first time any of the Forvie staff had seen a puffin here in atleast 16 years! They do nest close by, with a thriving colony at the Bullers of Buchan (about 7 miles north of here) and even closer to home on the cliffs of Whinnyfold.

Although puffins might not technically be within our reserve remit or sphere, thanks to that recent sighting and their close proximity to the reserve, I think it’s ok to write about them on this particular occasion, because who doesn’t love puffins! They’re so iconic with their beautifully coloured bills, big and expressive eyes, rather dumpy appearance and bright orange feet – unmistakeable and endearing all in one.

I’m going to kick-off with some Sunday afternoon taxonomy and etymology. Atlantic puffins are one of three species from the auk family and order of Charadriiformes. Auks are a broad family of seabirds or ‘Alcidae’, which include guillemots, razorbills, Black guillemots, little auks and puffins, in the UK.

The Common puffin is the only species of puffin to occur in the Atlantic Ocean. The other two species – Tufted puffin (Fratercula cirrhata) and Horned puffin (Fratercula corniculata), are found in the northeast Pacific and the latter species is more closely related to our puffins.

Fratercula is the species’ generic name and actually comes from the Medieval Latin word ‘fratercula’, which means the ‘friar’ (or travelling preacher). This is a reference to their monochrome plumage, which was thought to resemble monastic robes in the middle ages. Personally, I don’t really see much resemblance between Fria Tuck and a puffin, but you make your mind up about that!

The second part of its name ‘arctica’ has a more obvious connection to the bird’s northerly distribution around the North Atlantic. It’s derived from the Greek ‘arktos’ or ‘the bear’, which refers to the northerly constellation known as ‘The Great Bear’.

The bird’s vernacular name comes from the word ‘puff’ which refers to swollen. Ironically, the Latin name Puffinus puffinus, doesn’t belong to the puffin at all, instead it belongs to the Manx shearwater, which was called the ‘Manks puffin’ in past centuries.

Manks puffin is derived from Middle English word ‘pophyn’, which was used to describe fatty and salted seabird meat. This indicates that historically, these seabirds were a very popular food source for people. In fact, they are still sustainably harvested in northern Iceland and the Faroe Islands and used to be eaten by the inhabitants of St. Kilda (before it was abandoned), Orkney, Shetland and in other coastal areas across Scotland. The Common puffin finally received the conventional name ‘Atlantic puffin’ much later in 1768, because like the Manx shearwater, it nests in burrows.

Did you know puffins have big beaks for a reason? They need large beaks to catch as many small fish as possible, which is typically 10 at a time. However, the most fish to have ever been recorded in a puffins bill at once was 83 small sandeels! Prey species typically include lesser sandeels, sprat and herring, in UK waters. Adults need to eat around 40 small fish a day to survive and they hunt by diving into the water.

Their wings aren’t the best for flight, but underwater, they transform into feathered propellers, helping drive the birds towards their prey. Typically, these birds will dive 15 metres beneath the surface and can stay underwater for up to 60 seconds, but the record dive depth for a puffin is 60 metres! That’s a deep dive for such a small, buoyant and lightweight bird.

Speaking of weight and size, these birds are surprisingly small. Puffins typically weigh between 320g and 480g, measure up to 29cm in length and have a wingspan of 47cm to 63cm. Puffins are surprisingly obliging for the camera and people are so used to seeing close-ups of them, that they often imgaine they’re larger than they really are.

The ever so slightly larger males are a bit more eye-catching than the females, however both sexes appear almost identical. You might be surprised to learn that their awesome technicolour beaks aren’t a permanent feature of their morphology. The colourful, outside casing of the beak, is shed out at sea during the bird’s winter moult, when the black markings around the eyes (and their generally sharp appearance) turns into a duller and greyer plumage. It’s quite remarkable how different they appear in winter.

When swimming on the surface of the sea (where puffins actually spend most of their time), their pied appearance acts as surprisingly good camouflage, which is needed because they have many predator bullies to avoid. Aerial predators struggle to see the black puffins against the deep blue of the water and marine predators from beneath the waves, struggle to see their white belly against a pale sky.

Their small size makes them an easy target for bigger birds and animals. Great skuas or ‘Bonxies’ routinely harass them, sometimes hunting them for food, and regularly steal their catches. But thankfully, our local puffins will rarely come across Great skuas, as we’re a little bit south of their typical breeding range (which, in the UK, is usually Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles). However, Black-backed gulls are also significant predators of puffins and they do live in this region and are regularly seen on the reserve.

Rats, stoats, foxes and feral cats, also eat puffins and their eggs and young, which is why their biggest populations are found on off-shore islands – free of land-based mammal predators. The land-based colonies local to this region, although not on islands, are very steep-sided, rocky cliffs and quite inaccessible to larger mammal predators, which is why the puffins still persist. These birds are social and colonial breeders, so it is very hard for new populations to develop, as they prefer to breed nearby fellow puffins, which exclusively nest in burrows.

Although they often dig out their own burrows, it’s not uncommon for puffins to evict rabbits from burrows, pecking and chasing them out to claim a new home. Could they ever breed on the cliffs at the northern end of the reserve? It’s certainly possible, but it would require atleast several pairs of birds to decide to nest at the same locale and at the same time. In addition to this, the cliffs would need to be inaccessible enough to stave off most land-based predators and be vegetated enough for burrows to be dug out. Quite a tall order.

Puffins mate with the same partner for life, as do many other seabird species such as Fulmars. Although this might seem rather romantic, it’s more likely to be a practical choice to do with their habit of returning to the same burrow year on year. Pair bonds are reinstated with an endearing courtship behaviour, known as billing. This involves two puffins repeatedly clattering their bills together and is an iconic scene in the natural world, observed in other species such as albatross.

It might be surprising to learn that each year, puffins will only lay a single egg. Both parents will look after that egg, which takes approximately 40 days to hatch. The hatchling is called a ‘Puffling’ and they have grey and black feathers and a dull beak. After one and half months of constant feeding, the puffling will slowly make its way down the cliffs to the sea. This final stage before adulthood, is the most dangerous task for the puffling, as it’s undertaken on foot, because it cannot fly properly yet. This is done at night-time to avoid most of the predators.

Once the pufflings reach the sea, they will stay there for up to three years, before returning to the cliffs to breed as adult puffins. Adults can typically live for atleast 25 years, but the oldest recorded Atlantic puffin was ringed in Norway and lived to be 41 years old: an impressive age for such a small bird. In fact it’s likely that puffins can live even longer than this, because rings or bands durable enough to last 40 years or more, have only come into wide use relatively recently. Therefore, it’s still quite hard to tell whether there are any birds that have lived beyond that time.

If you do come across an unusual or rare species on the reserve, please feel free to record it in the Visitor Centre. This can either be added to our ‘Latest Sightings’ board or written into our ‘Visitor Wildlife Sightings’ logbook. Thanks for reading. Take care, Danny

Somehow, we now find ourselves two-thirds of the way through July, having seemingly not had a moment to draw breath. In fact it seems scarcely believable that the summer solstice is now a month behind us, receding rapidly into the distance in the rear-view mirror. The seventh month of the year usually works out as one of the busiest in the Reserve’s calendar, and this year has been no exception. It’s all go for Forvie’s wildlife and people alike.

Everywhere we look at the moment, there’s something happening. The grassland of North Forvie is steadily changing from the green of high summer to the pink, brown and russet hues of the harvest season, and here and there a flash of fox-red resolves itself into one of Forvie’s Roe Deer. The does have now calved and come into season, with the result that the bucks are showing a keen interest in them – as well as a distinct animosity towards any other bucks.

The fellow in the photo above looked to have been in the wars – note the tattered state of his left ear. But if he’d incurred this injury as a result of a fight with another buck, it clearly hadn’t been a wasted effort, as he was accompanied by a doe whom he wasn’t letting out of his sight. July is when it all happens for Roe Deer, and it’s at this time of the year that you may hear their hoarse, dog-like barking calls echoing across the heath on a still evening.

From large creatures to small ones now, and having recently reported upon the abundance of Common Toads during the wet weather that has characterised July, this week we also spotted this tiny Palmate Newt on the move. These are easily mistaken for lizards when encountered on dry land, but they have a proportionately larger head, shorter legs and tail, and soft velvety skin rather than scales. Their movements are also much slower and more deliberate – a lizard would never have been obliging enough to stop for the following photo. In this instance, I have quite deliberately included one of my fingers in the shot to give an idea of scale (rather than across the lens, as usual).

Jumping to the subject of botany now, the marsh at Rockend currently contains a good scatter of Ragged Robins among the grasses and rushes. Usually a delicate pink colour, with a reddish tint to the stems and flower buds, this is an attractive and instantly-recognisable species. This week, however, we were surprised and delighted to find a rare white example – even lacking the reddish tones to the stems. A first for us here at Forvie!

The same area also holds a few patches of Marsh Thistles and Creeping Thistles, two plants which are massively popular with our Dark Green Fritillary butterflies. Unmistakable in their orange-and-black finery, these are particularly abundant during mid-July, and any patch of thistles on the Reserve is likely to produce a sighting just now.

Down on the beach, tidal currents have regularly made a mess of the barrier fence in recent weeks. This fence denotes the closed-off sanctuary area in South Forvie where the terns nest, and is a crucial piece of infrastructure in helping to give the birds the freedom from disturbance which they require in order to nest successfully. It does a great job for us, but it’s a nightmare to maintain; many a happy morning throughout the season is spent digging out the buried ropes and poles, and sledge-hammering them back into place.

Sadly, the beach continues to resemble something of a war zone, with the carcasses of dead birds littering the strand line as a result of the continuing avian ‘flu epidemic. On Wednesday we censused the beach from Rockend to the pillbox just north of the Ythan mouth, and recorded over 400 dead and dying birds – this works out as approximately one every five paces along the beach. Multiplying this up over the entire coastline gives an idea of the horrifying scale of the carnage that’s unfolding this summer.

The biggest losers in terms of numbers are Guillemots, with both adults and chicks washing up dead. This makes for some upsetting scenes for those of a sensitive disposition, but might perhaps act as an eye-opener for people too. Nature’s in trouble – these seabirds face many anthropogenic pressures on top of the current viral outbreak – and sometimes it takes scenes like this to act as a wake-up call not to take things for granted. Wildlife needs our help and our consideration, and the evidence is literally here at our feet.

Moving on to a happier subject, our recent public events once again proved very popular, with excellent attendances recorded at both our Fun Day and Moth Morning. The former took place on Friday 14th, and as usual offered a range of activities for people of all ages, plus a chance to chat to the Reserve staff and find out a bit more about Forvie.

We were also delighted to work with partners from other organisations. Attendees included former seasonal warden Caitlin McLeod in her new role with insect conservation charity Buglife, Lauren Dunkley from East Grampian Coastal Partnership, storyteller Pauline Cordiner, Wildlife Crime Officer PC Hannah Corbett, and the ladies of Collieston & Slains WRI who provided some outstanding refreshments. Something for everyone!

Four days later came the aforementioned Moth Morning, led by Helen Rowe from Aberdeenshire Council Ranger Service with her trusty band of volunteer helpers. The previous night we had set no fewer than five different moth traps around the Forvie Centre and your author’s garden in Collieston. Although the night hadn’t been ideal for trapping – it was a bit too cool and windy to produce a really good catch – we did manage a respectable haul of moths, including some real crowd-pleasers. Judge for yourself from the following reel of photos!

For many people, coming face-to-face with these bright and beautiful moths is a real revelation. Here is a world of colour and intrigue right under our collective noses, with which many of us never come into contact. Best of all, the young people who attended the event were captivated by the moths – after all, these are the people who will inherit, and thence determine the future of, the natural world.

No pressure then, kids. But based on this week’s little snapshot, I am hopeful that nature will be left in good hands.

After the long series of clear, settled and searingly hot days that characterised May and June, the month of July has so far been temperamental and unpredictable. Yes, it’s been hot when the sun has shone. But we’ve also had some apocalyptic rain, thunder and winds from seemingly every point of the compass. Over the course of the past three weeks, I’m struggling to think of a day on the Reserve in which I didn’t end up getting wet at some point. Last month it felt like Greece here, but recently things have reverted back to the classic, elusive Scottish summer that we all know and love.

As any gardener will tell you, the plants have been very grateful indeed for the ‘rain rebate’ after the spring drought. The previously-parched grassland and heath have at last been replenished – and from our perspective as site managers, the worries about wildfire have been assuaged, for the time being at least. I’ve had to remind myself of these obvious positives each time I’ve been soaked to the undercarriage recently.

Speaking of plants, the high summer period is an excellent time to look for some of Forvie’s rarer and more unusual species. Due to the well-drained and nutrient-poor soil, and the harsh and salty climate, most of these specialist plants are small and low to the ground. A classic example is the Small Adder’s-tongue Fern, found among the short grassland of the dune slacks.

In the north of the Reserve, some of the damper areas provide a home for the inaptly-named Common Wintergreen. This attractive plant flowers in midsummer, not winter, and it certainly isn’t common – at least not in this part of the world. As it prefers moist ground, it’s one species that will have been grateful for the rainfall we’ve received over the past three or four weeks.

A specialist in a completely different type of environment is the enigmatic Oysterplant. This can only be found at one location on the Reserve, just south of Collieston, where it grows along the upper strand line of the cobble beach beneath the cliffs. It flowers in midsummer from June onwards, but its grey-green succulent leaves can be found over a longer period of the year. This is a plant able to tolerate the harshest of conditions: drought, high winds, an absence of proper soil, and a heavy burden of salt from the sea. A true specialist indeed.

A much more common and widespread plant in full flower just now is Wild Thyme. It can be easily found alongside the footpaths particularly along the estuary side, and in addition to its deliciously familiar smell, it can be recognised by its frothy pink flowers – which are a real favourite for pollinating insects.

Down at the ternery, the vegetation has gone utterly bonkers with the onset of wet weather over the past few weeks. This creates a good deal of trouble for us in terms of maintaining the protective electric fence around the tern colony. Vegetation, especially in wet conditions, can be an efficient conductor of electricity, and each stem that touches the fence conducts a little bit more power to earth. This has the two-pronged effect of both reducing the shock potential of the fence to a potential predator, and draining the batteries. In order to prevent this, vegetation cutting and pulling around the 1,000-metre fence-line is an essential but much-disliked daily chore for the Forvie staff in July.

One of the plant protagonists-in-chief at the ternery is Rosebay Willowherb. But for its slightly invasive tendencies, growing through the fence like some sort of triffid, I could almost be persuaded to like the stuff. It has bonny sprays of pink flowers that will probably be familiar to most folk, rural and urban alike, as it tends to be an early colonist of disturbed ground both in the country and on brownfield sites. Apparently in Alaska (where it goes by the alternative name of Fireweed, owing to its habit of appearing on previously burnt ground) it’s known as the harbinger of snow, as when the pink flowers reach the very top of the stem and die back, it’s officially autumn. Just saying…

By way of a brief update since our bird ‘flu missive a fortnight ago, many of the terns have now finished their breeding season and are beginning to drift away, much to our relief. In the meantime, we have recorded around 400 successfully-fledged Arctic and Common Terns, despite ongoing losses to the virus. We can but hope that the survivors will eventually return to Forvie, treating us to the spectacle of skies full of terns for years to come.

A bit of wildlife miscellany with which to end this week’s instalment. Firstly a couple of nice moth records – timely as well, given that we have a ‘moth morning’ event planned for the coming week! The first of these was a Garden Tiger found roosting on the ternery electric fence – our first record of the year of the adult moth, having been seeing the hairy caterpillars over the past few months.

Secondly, a welcome piece of good luck was the chance discovery of a Hummingbird Hawk-moth nectaring at some Honeysuckle flowers – always a delight to see, if a devil’s job to capture on camera. Luckily Catriona is much better at this than I am!

Lastly, the damp evenings have provided perfect conditions for spotting one of the Reserve’s most charismatic creatures (in my opinion at least) – the incomparable Common Toad. They seem to be everywhere after a shower of rain just now – including at the ternery, where we were treated to an amusing stand-off between a large itinerant toad and a territorial Little Tern. The tern was absolutely incensed by the presence of the toad in its nesting area and mobbed it furiously, while the toad responded by freezing on the spot, wearing an expression of hurt bemusement – or at least that’s how it appeared from my viewing position in any case. Eventually the toad retreated, walking on its tiptoes and puffed up with indignance, and the tern settled back to its brood of fledglings, and peace was once again restored in the world – or at least in that little corner of it.

The tern-versus-toad affair was a fine example of nature’s ability to provide some much-needed light relief; some sunshine amid the stormclouds of what’s been, at times, a difficult summer. Surely that’s as good a reason as any to take great care of it for the future.

Apologies in advance, readers, for the sombre nature of this week’s blog, but in late June it appears that our luck finally ran out at Forvie with regards to avian ‘flu. Although the subject matter inevitably makes for grim reading, it’s a story worth telling nevertheless. This is, after all, one of the defining environmental issues of the last couple of years, particularly here in north-east Scotland.

Around ten days ago we began to notice higher-than-usual numbers of Black-headed Gull fledglings dying along the foreshore of the estuary. A degree of attrition is perfectly normal among juvenile gulls even in a good season, so initially it wasn’t clear whether anything unusual was happening. But as the numbers began to increase, it appeared that something was afoot.

Added to this, we also began to see small numbers of adult gulls either dead or moribund around the estuary. Then a visit into the Sandwich Tern colony revealed over two hundred dead fledglings – again, a degree of natural mortality is quite normal among young Sandwich Terns, but the scale and sudden nature of the die-off in this instance immediately set off the alarm-bells.

After an emergency meeting with senior colleagues to discuss the developing situation, we set about taking swab samples from a series of dead gulls and terns, which have since been dispatched for laboratory analysis in order to ascertain whether avian ‘flu is indeed to blame for the deaths. This was one of those jobs that doesn’t make it into my top ten favourite duties – but then, as we know, working on Reserves isn’t all rare birds and roses.

Thus my Tuesday morning last week consisted of firstly emptying the dog poo bin at the Forvie Centre, followed by dressing up in full haz-mat gear and taking oropharyngeal and cloacal swabs from eight dead gulls and terns, before dealing with the mountain of paperwork associated with them. If, after all this, somebody had told me (as they sometimes do) that I must have “the best job in the world, and I can’t believe they actually pay you for this”, then I think I would have completely thrown my rods.

Anyway, where does this leave the Reserve and its remaining birds? Firstly, until the lab results come back, we can’t say for 100% certain that it’s avian ‘flu, though all the circumstantial evidence points that way. Secondly, there’s very little we can do to help the birds in any case. What we can do, however, is to give those that remain the best chance of success by continuing to protect them from predators and disturbance, thereby reducing the other pressures upon them. At the same time, we also find ourselves very much on the front line when it comes to recording, reporting our observations, and learning more about this situation – all of which may help us to mitigate against it in the future.

And there are one or two silver linings. In Sandwich Terns at least, the mortality among adults has thus far been low, with almost all of the dead birds (at the time of writing at least) comprising juveniles of fledging age. Terns are long-lived birds, and they can endure a couple of duff breeding seasons as long as the core breeding population survives. Also, both the Sandwich Terns and Black-headed Gulls had hitherto enjoyed a very productive season in 2023, meaning that for all the dead fledglings we’ve been seeing, others have already successfully fledged from the colony. Given the chance, and a fair rub of the green, we are hopeful that they might be able to weather this particular storm – but we’ll need to look after them more carefully than ever in future breeding seasons.

For the remainder of this season, our thoughts turn towards the smaller species still present at the Forvie ternery. Our Arctic and Common Terns all have well-grown young which, if they survive, may start to fledge within a week or so. Obviously their season is on a knife-edge, and it remains to be seen whether they suffer the same fate as their larger cousins, or if they will dodge the proverbial bullet. In the meantime, all we can do is observe, record and cross our fingers!

Likewise our Eider ducks, which have just about finished hatching for the year, and are now at the half-grown-ducklings stage. Like the terns, they enjoyed a superb first half of the season, and the peak duckling count so far this summer stands at a whopping 358. Last year, we think avian ‘flu was a contributing factor in their poor fledging success (from an early peak of 185 ducklings, just 21 survived to fledge in 2022). Here’s hoping for better luck on their behalf this season.

Without wishing to get too personal about things, it’s worth mentioning the impact of this situation upon the people who seek to protect these struggling species, both at Forvie and elsewhere. This isn’t a job for the faint-hearted at the best of times. We live in an age of biodiversity loss, and for every one of my forty-odd years on Planet Earth, more and more nature has been eroded away. If you care deeply about these things – and you’d be hard-pressed to find a conservation worker or volunteer who doesn’t – this is a difficult backdrop against which to live your life, and it’s all too easy to become bitter or nihilistic. Your working life can feel like you’re constantly swimming against the tide, or whistling (in the polite version of the expression) into the wind.

In the face of all this, the success of the ternery down the years has at least helped to temper the losses elsewhere, and allowed us to feel we’re making a positive difference, both locally and beyond the boundaries of the Reserve (see here for more). It’s been a rare beacon of success in a desolate age for nature. Now we find ourselves hoping against hope that this latest setback doesn’t threaten that which we’ve worked so hard to protect.

In our role as the interface between the Reserve’s wildlife and the general public, we are currently spending a fair bit of time explaining the present situation to our visitors and neighbours. It’s not nice having to be the bearer of bad news every day of the week. Spare a thought especially for the likes of Danny and Robert, who are in their first season at Forvie – what a season in which to start off! Still, we’ll all continue to do our best for the Reserve and its wildlife, whatever the rest of the season may hold.

July is likely to feel like a long month – but all is not lost. Wish us and the wildlife luck, folks!

Sorry, folks, couldn’t resist that. Truth is, though, that the longest day is indeed now behind us – and for those of us who work on the Reserve, this is met with no small amount of relief. For in some ways, this is a strangely contradictory period of the year. It’s an exciting time for the naturalist, with a huge amount of interest on the go, particularly if you’re keen on your plants and insects. On the debit side, it’s a frantically busy period, with little time to take it all in; added to that, the relentless daylight makes sleep and rest difficult to come by. Consequently, the solstice sunset is always something of a bittersweet experience.

The breakneck pace of life in high summer is well illustrated by our breeding birds. There are now fledglings everywhere: from Sandwich Terns to Stonechats, and all things in between. Of these two examples, the Sandwich Terns’ season is nearly over – parents and young will soon be moving on, marking the beginning of their long and leisurely autumn migration. For the Stonechats though, the pace will not let up for a while yet – having raised one brood, many will get back in the saddle and do it all again. Some will even raise three broods of chicks before the summer’s over. Now that’s the real definition of ‘busy’ – by comparison, we’ve got nothing to complain about.

The Reserve hosts something in the region of 7,000 pairs of breeding birds each summer, of perhaps 60 or 70 different species. Some of these, like the aforementioned Sandwich Terns, are present at Forvie in internationally-important numbers. Many others fly unspeakable distances from far-flung corners of the world to come here and raise their young. Despite all this remarkable diversity and wonder, however, one particular pair of breeding birds seem to attract a disproportionate amount of interest from locals and visitors alike: the Sand Loch Mute Swans. Last year I was asked about them so frequently that I considered changing the message on the office answer-machine: “To enquire about the swans, press 1…”.

I suppose because they’re big and white and obvious, they’re a lot easier to keep track of than, say, the Sedge Warblers and Reed Buntings that share the environs of the loch. Or maybe it’s the undeniably-cute cygnets that pique people’s interest. Either way, their progress is of huge intrigue to many of our regulars – almost in the manner of a Springwatch-style soap opera. Here’s hoping it has a happy ending upon which we can report later in the year.

Prior to this week’s thundery bursts of rain, the drought on the Reserve had really begun to bite. As a result, the grassland of North Forvie looks more like a late-July landscape than a late-June one. The grasses are looking at their best just now, with the flower-stems lending a red hue to the landscape.

This is the season for wild flowers at Forvie. Variety of species and intensity of colour are both at their peak, and a walk along any of the footpaths is a rewarding experience just now. The Sand Loch trail is a particularly fruitful area for the attractive Northern Marsh Orchid, with many hundreds growing alongside the path. Hurry though, as the dry conditions will mean the flowers won’t last as long as they might in a cooler and wetter year.

Along the same route, both White and Red Clovers are also in evidence. Their bonny flowers are magnetically attractive for Bumblebees, among other invertebrates. Clover is a great source of nectar for our pollinating insects. It also has a fine sweet smell on a hot, still day.

Another boon for pollinators is the Ox-eye Daisy – although its scent is far less pleasing, to our human noses at least. This plant is locally abundant in certain places, and its flowers are at their zenith just now.

Probably the most obvious and familiar nectar-feeders – apart from the aforementioned Bumblebees – are our butterflies. This week saw the first Dark Green Fritillary of the year appearing on the Reserve. These paradoxically-named butterflies, resplendent in orange and black, are usually our most abundant species in high summer.

While the Fritillaries may be relatively big and showy, the Common Blue is a tiny gem which is easily overlooked by the casual observer. Its blue upperwings change colour according to the light conditions and the angle of observation, appearing dusky, purplish or azure at any given moment. Its small size and rapid flight makes it easy to miss, but it can often be found around its favourite food plant, Bird’s-foot Trefoil.

The leafy gardens of Collieston, bordering the Reserve to the north, support a different assemblage of species. These include Large and Small Whites, which are seldom seen in the interior of the Reserve; by contrast, Forvie’s ‘own’ white butterfly is the Green-veined White, a double-brooded species that’s currently in the gap between its spring and summer generations.

Down on the estuary, we are delighted to be able to report upon the best hatch of Eider ducklings for many a year. On Wednesday, a whole-estuary count produced a whopping 358 ducklings – and like the Sand Loch cygnets, they’re growing fast. Fingers crossed for the rest of their season, and that the fledging success matches that of the hatch.

The Eider ducklings grow quickly thanks to a high-energy diet, comprised of tiny invertebrates that live in the mud and water of the estuary. The mudflats of the estuary at low tide may appear grey, flat and lifeless at first glance, but just below the surface the sediment is teeming with life. There’s an oft-quoted statistic that a cubic metre of estuarine mud contains as many calories as 16 Mars bars (other chocolate bars are of course available). That’s a lot of energy – and a lot of micro-organisms!

On Thursday we welcomed a visit from two P1 classes from Ellon Primary School, and one of the activities we carried out with them was a spot of mud-dipping. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t involve dipping primary school kids in mud; instead it’s the art of sifting through the mud to find the creatures that live within it. It’s a great exercise to learn about nature, and to get your hands dirty at the same time. What’s not to like?

A good bit of sifting and splashing later, and everyone got together to tell the rest of the class what they’d discovered. Finds included shells of Shore Crabs and Tellins, little squiggly Ragworms, and literally hundreds of Corophium shrimps. And all from just half a bucket full of estuary mud.

It’s been estimated by researchers working on estuaries like the Ythan that these Corophium shrimps can occur at extraordinary densities of up to 100,000 individuals per square metre. Yes, square metre. Multiply this up across the whole estuary, and the numbers involved are quite mind-blowing. Not that we burdened the kids with such statistics – it was a delight just to be able to show them the amount of life present in a single scoop of mud.

Mud-dipping acts as a tiny window into an entire universe that exists, unseen, beneath the surface of the estuary. But without this abundance of life in the ooze, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the spectacle of thousands of waterbirds, which is so much a part of life at Forvie. Our local area, and indeed the world, would be all the poorer without it. Glorious mud indeed!

Midsummer’s week done then. We’ve reached the summit of the year – time to stop pedalling furiously, and start coasting enjoyably down the other side at a more relaxed pace. The longest day is past, but the best of the year lies ahead.

We were lucky enough to have along weekend off last weekend… four whole days away from work, which you need in the middle of summer to keep you sane! But, when you come back, you see the changes that have been happening in those four days and, while it’s not midsummer yet, and no-one will thank us for saying it, quite suddenly it feels like a-u-t-u-m-n on the estuary.

Just within the space of week, the sights and sounds have changed. Suddenly, there are lapwing flocks on the upper estuary, a mixture of failed breeders and parents with fledged young – look, kids, this is where we can feed up before moving on or stay over the winter.

And we’ve seen curlew, high overhead, coming in off the North Sea, calling, already heading south for the winter. It’s almost impossible to describe but somehow their returning call is different from their outbound one. Often, outbound, they are in flocks, calling to one another with a sense of anticipation and urgency…but, returning, their call is somehow lonely and plaintive, the excitement of spring fading to the survival of autumn and winter. The curlew we are seeing on the estuary now look a little worn and ragged, tired out by their breeding attempts and migration.

Even for birds in prime breeding plumage, like this black-tailed godwit, it is impossible to tell which way it is going. Is this a bird that’s just really late in heading for Arctic breeding ground and will be about to migrate north – or is it a bird that’s failed to breed and has already begun the long trek south to warmer climates? Either way, it’s a treat to see the lovely brick-red, tiger-striped plumage of a breeding godwit.

The other thing that’s making the estuary sound a bit autumn-y is the wheezing of all the black-headed gull fledglings. It’s a late summer sort of sound, as the young gulls disperse from the colony at the mouth of the river and start to explore the world, while still constantly begging for food from their parents. While they will be fed for a while, they will soon have to learn to fend for themselves.

But, for some birds, a lot of the hard work is still to come. While the black-headed gulls are fledging, the sandwich terns haven’t quite started yet and the young still need a fair bit of feeding – or brooding to protect them from the heat of the sun.

Even when the terns have caught a fish, they still have to deliver it. This is easier said than done, in a large seabird colony. First, the bird has to find its own chick, never an easy task in the seething mass of several hundred chicks. They do so by call so adult and chick will both call to try and locate each other – but it’s hard to hear anything over every other parent and chick doing the same. Then you need to hang onto your fish, as every chick will beg hopefully from any adult with a fish – and the older chicks may even try to snatch it. This fish started looking increasingly ragged the longer the adult wandered around with it from all the attempted snatches by chicks.

No wonder some of the adults are starting to look a little worn! They literally go grey over the course of the summer as they gradually moult into their winter plumage. It may be the case that the older birds -as with people! – go grey earlier in the breeding season, while the younger birds keep their black cap longer.

Meanwhile, the works of feeding chicks is just starting in the Arctic and common tern colony. All the chicks there are less than a week old and are visibly suffering from the heat, so need regular feeds to hydrate as well as grow.

While the adults don’t appreciate our (necessary) presence to maintain the predator-proof fence, there can be few more beautiful sights in the natural world than an Arctic tern hovering against a clear blue sky – even if it is about to dive bomb you!

Away from the estuary, we are seeing more butterflies and moths emerging in the sun. Small heaths have appeared this week and the burnet moth caterpillars we struggling to avoid a month ago have now emerged as a striking black-and-red moth.

And the northern marsh orchids are probably at their best just now. The Sand Loch trail is one of the best places to see them, growing right beside the path.

We’ll finish this week’s blog with a brief trip back to the estuary. We were lucky enough to catch up with a cracking great white egret on Tuesday. This bird will have been an overshoot migrant, drifting too far north in the fine weather and southerly winds. While it had to be viewed through an extreme heat shimmer, it was a real taste of the south here in north-east Scotland!

Around 3 centuries ago, there was the myth of the ‘inexhaustible sea’. It seemed that the sea was a source of endless bounty of oil and fur and feather and ivory, and to fulfil this need, whales, seals, birds and walruses were slaughtered in unimaginable millions. Seabirds too, suffered, taken as provisions or decimated by introduced cats, rats and dogs. Yet, even today, after centuries of decline, a seabird colony hints at the plenty of the past, a bustling, smelly, life-filled place, alive with wings and noise.

And there’s no doubt a seabird cliff in summer is a magical place, a feast for every sense. From the pinks of the thrift, to the blue of the sea, to the teeming ledges full of bickering birds, the sense of life and movement stuns the senses. Then there’s the noise – a myriad of voices, calling, overlapping, all backed by the sound of the waves and wind. And even the smell – the not-totally-unpleasant sweet reek of guano. These colonies, so full of life, can make it look like everything is doing just fine, but sadly it couldn’t be further from the truth. Seabirds, to use an avian analogy, are often like a miner’s canary: an indicator of the health of the seas. As creatures near the top of the food chain, they will often be the first visible sign that something is wrong with our oceans.

We’re lucky in the UK, and especially in Scotland, to have globally important populations of seabirds. Forget haggis and tartan, if you think Scotland, then you should think seabirds – our populations are that important! And we have a long-term data set from monitoring these birds, going back to the mid-1980s. Sadly that shows a general trend towards species declining and the reasons for this are probably many and complicated, but will involves things like climate change, fishing practices, marine litter and, recently bird ‘flu. So, as it is most years, we went out to do our annual cliff-nesting seabird census with a slight degree of trepidation. Would this year be the one that our seabirds crashed, like they have up north?

The answer, was, mercifully no. While we don’t have massive seabird cliffs here at Forvie, they have the bonus you can get really close to the birds and get some cracking views of them. So it’s always hard to keep your scientific hat on and not just sit and there and enjoy the sun, the thrift, the sea and the birds. It’s so easy to get sucked into watching them and their behaviour that you need to have a discipline that I don’t always possess… ’Ooh, eggs! Cute, chicks! Oooh, fight!’ …it’s very easy to get distracted! But you do have to set that all aside and concentrate on clicking the right number of nests or birds.

So, how are they doing this year? Well, as always, there are winners and losers. Kittiwakes, those elegant gulls, were ever-so-slightly up on last year and are our most plentiful cliff-nester. They are one of the dominant sounds of the cliffs, incessantly shouting kitt-i-wake at one another. Their nests, glued to sheer rock with a mixture of guano and hope, always look like the slightest gust of wind will destroy them, but so far they are doing fine.

These birds ‘dip-feed’, taking small prey from the sea’s surface, so are very vulnerable to changes in sea currents and availability of small fish like sand eels. It’s thought that sand eel declines and shifts in availability in the North Sea may be linked to their population crash in the Northern Isles. It seems, so far at least, they are getting sand eels in our part of the sea, but that could change with increases in sea temperature. While ‘our’ kittiwakes are doing ok, their population has declined by 50% in the past 30 years.

Our next most plentiful cliff-nester is now the razorbill. Exceptionally dapper in their black-and-white plumage and fine pin-striping, they are named after their beak which is much the same shape as an old cut-throat razor. I’m told by bird ringers it’s quite an apt name and they’ll cheerfully open up your knuckles if you handle them. They – and guillemots (also slight up on 2022) – lay their eggs directly onto the rock. It was long thought that these fat-bottomed, fairly conical eggs were that shape to allow them to roll in a circle, but it now looks likely the shape is to do with retaining air space for the developing chick of the eggs gets partly submerged in rain or seabird guano.

Perhaps a little surprisingly, herring gulls were also slightly up on last year. I must admit, I get a wee bit impatient with all the ‘gull menace’ headlines you hear, when you look at their numbers over the years. Back in the 1980s, there were over 2000 pairs on the cliffs here. Even 10 years ago, there were 230 pairs. This year there were 36. So, in my lifetime, that’s a decline of over 99.9 %. Okay, some have relocated to cities and are nicking chips but that points to a wider problem: they aren’t finding enough food in their ‘natural’ habitat. Being smart, they’ve adapted to Saturday-night takeaway, but the sad truth is that there may not be enough of their natural food to sustain them.

And we’ve retained a single pair of great-black backed gulls this year, too. Known not-totally-affectionately as ‘Geebs’ to the staff from their GBB abbreviation, they are the largest species of gull in the world and have a voracious appetite. They will readily scavenge pretty much anything and will also steal food from or predate other seabirds like terns or puffins.

It was also nice to see three pairs of shags breeding with us this year. Never a bird present in high numbers, their lovely bottle-green gloss and startlingly green eye make them a striking, if not totally attractive bird. Their young, however, look reptilian and it’s easy to believe birds and dinosaurs are related when you look at a shag chick.

Unfortunately, our big loser this year was that handsome northern albatross, the fulmar. These birds have been in decline since the 1970s and early indications are that bird ‘flu has hit these last year. They are really characterful birds, gliding with effortless ease on board-still wings and are masters of the air. But, on land, they are clumsy and always look vaguely grumpy, an impression not helped by gurking and cackling in a pair bonding display with their partner. Fulmars take life easy, with the adults sitting on the egg for around fifty days, and it being another 50-70 days until the chick is ready to fly. This year, one had taken over an old raven’s nest and was looking decidedly smug about having a comfortable nest rather than a rocky ledge. Microplastics are a real threat to fulmars, and often dead birds are found to have stomachs crammed with plastics.

And finally…something we’ve never seen in surveying seabirds here in the past 16 years …a puffin! Everyone’s favourite seabird, we’ve always seen nuffin rather than puffin (..sorry…), but, this year, there was one, sitting on a sea stack, preening. We suspect it wasn’t breeding and we’d just been lucky enough to catch it having a wee rest and a preen, but we will keep a look out just in case we have acquired a new breeding species for the reserve!