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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last week started off in much the same manner as any other working week at Forvie. A hurried cuppa, a check of the list of jobs to be done, a quick appraisal of weather forecast and tide tables, then boots and coat on, and out the door. With Monday having been the first day of the month, my list of duties contained such thrills as submitting the utility meter readings (yawn) and checking the visitor counters (two out of three broken down, sigh). However, just after 0900 I received a telephone call from a local resident and stalwart of the Grampian Ringing Group; this would at least guarantee some craic, so I gladly picked up. As it turned out, he was out for a walk along the estuary, and had found something odd washed ashore.

The description over the phone contained such intriguing nuggets of information as ‘weird cephalopod’ and ‘tentacles as thick as your arms’, and certainly warranted further investigation. As it happened, we were due to visit that part of the Reserve that very morning, to continue with the fence dismantling work we had commenced two weeks previously. The finder agreed to meet us on site. Our interest was piqued for sure. Unbeknownst to us, has been reported on the 28th via another local wildlife FB page so had been lurking on the estuary for at least a couple of days- as testified to by the second-hand-seafood smell!

Catriona and I were the duty staff on Monday, and being jacks-of-all trades, neither of us has a background in marine biology. However, as luck would have it, we know someone who does! Dr Lauren Smith from East Grampian Coastal Partnership is a marine biologist by trade, and was able to come out to the Reserve for a look. By the time we met up on site, Lauren and our local stalwart had located two substantial tentacles washed up on the beach. Whatever this was, it wasn’t anything that any of us had crossed paths with before.

By this time, we were speculating as to whether this might be the remains of a Giant Squid, with one having apparently previously been found washed up at Newburgh in 1998. However, and viz. the photo above, the absence of ‘teeth’ in the suckers allowed that species to be ruled out. Thanks to Lauren’s network of contacts, including some outstanding marine biologists, we received confirmation that this was in fact a Seven-arm Octopus, a rarely-observed deep-sea species, and a truly remarkable find. How it had ended up here was anybody’s guess.

If, like me, you consider an octopus with seven arms to be a contradiction in terms, then you’d be right. It does actually have eight arms; on males of the species, the eighth arm is much reduced in size, and specialised for reproductive use (honest – look it up). Alternative names for this species include Septopus (understandable, but biologically inaccurate), Blob Octopus (urrrrrgh), and my personal favourite, Giant Gelatinous Octopus (yum).

What was even more remarkable than the discovery itself was the media brouhaha that followed. Admittedly, this story is a blog-writer’s dream, and allows me to quite legitimately use all those old lines about the story growing arms and legs, and the media being suckers for it, and how it made for kraken good copy, etc etc etc. But I still can’t really explain why everyone went so bonkers for it – I mean we quite often find cool stuff on the Reserve, but we’re never sure what will capture people’s imagination. In any case, by the end of the working week, Lauren and Catriona had each been interviewed and quoted extensively, with Catriona having even spoken to ABC in Australia (!) – I guess it’s a change from their usual news diet of pummelling the Poms in the cricket.

In other news this week (see, they’ll make a journalist of me yet), we continued with the off-road trials of the on-loan electric pickup truck. The critical element of this was to see how it performed on the soft sand of Forvie beach, an exercise undertaken with no small degree of trepidation – get badly stuck, and it could be you having to phone HQ and explain why the new toy is up to its roof at high tide. So as a backup, we also took the old diesel truck and a stout tow-rope, just in case. Then it was a case of fastening seat-belts and crossing fingers.

I won’t bore you with the details here, but suffice to say we really put it through its paces. I have been driving diesel pickups on Forvie beach for nearly nineteen years, so I’ve got a good idea of what you can and can’t get away with. With this in mind, I deliberately pulled a series of manoeuvres that would be best described as ‘strongly unadvisable’ in a diesel truck, just to see what happened. And for the most part, it coped admirably, achieving things that would never have been possible in a diesel – very promising indeed!

In fact its only Achilles’ heel was when we put it into reverse, when it went from super-capable to utter liability at a stroke – presumably something to do with the weight distribution, or the balance of power between front and rear axles. Anyway, this was all very useful experience: testing new vehicles in real-life situations like this enables us to feed back to our colleagues at HQ, and thence to the manufacturers themselves, hopefully leading to further development and improvement as time goes on.

Now I’m not someone who enjoys off-road driving (quite why people pay good money, on their days off, to be clattered around inside a vehicle remains a mystery to me), but the sunset behind Forvie beach made this week’s exercise all the more enjoyable.

Forget the 4×4, give me a heavy rake and a muddy ditch any day. Thursday saw another chunk of the annual drainage works ticked off, this time along the coastal path between the Coastguard’s Pool and Hackley Bay. The worst bit (or most enjoyable bit, depending on your viewpoint) is the Mealy Burn, where the ochre-rich outflow from the Coastguard’s Pool passes under the long wooden footbridge. The idea here is to keep the water off the deck of the bridge; with the water level having been rising steadily lately, half an hour’s work saw it lowered by more than a foot – check the rusty tide-marks on the bridge supports in the paired photos below. Now that’s my sort of work…

Lastly, the end of the week saw another ‘super moon’ (observation: is it just me, or are they all ‘super moons’ these days – a bit like all new houses being ‘luxury’ or ‘executive’, and all household items being ‘packed with the latest tech’?) – this one apparently being the Cold Moon. In a moody sky with a broken overcast, this made for some atmospheric scenes over the Reserve at dusk.

Righto, that’s about all for this week. I’m away for my supper now – think I’m fancying some calamari…

It’s never the best start to the working week when you’re soaked walking TO the office on a Monday morning. But it was a continuation on last week’s theme of soggy socks and (as we’d say in the local dialect) “sipin’ weet” staff – and that was before 9am! Still, time, tide and weather waits for no man – or indeed reserve staff – and we just had to get cracked on with continuing dismantling the old eider fence. Still, at least the sleet had turned to rain….got to look on the bright side!

While we were doing some of the work on the fence, we were accompanied by a cracking male stonechat, who spent much of the morning following us along the fenceline. It’s likely that pulling up wire was disturbing small insects hidden in the vegetation, which the ‘chat was gratefully snatching up.

We often only half-jokingly say a lot of reserve work consists of cutting something down, digging it up or, in extreme cases, setting fire to it. These can be oddly satisfying jobs but it’s always nicer doing something constructive, building or repairing something. Consequently, we jumped at the chance to help repair a bridge at our sister reserve Muir of Dinnet during the week. While the decking is sound, the handrail had seen better days and, for safety reasons, needed replaced.

Another thing we only say half-jokingly is that we’re jacks of all trades and masters of none. And it’s true of reserve work – you have to turn your hand to a bit of amateur joinery one day, then be a professional field biologist the next. While some people might struggle with the lack of consistency, it’s often the very thing that reserve staff enjoy – the sheer variety in our work. One minute it’s clearing out drains….

….the next it’s counting seals. There’s been anywhere between 150- 700 around the Ythan mouth lately, thought the number varies greatly from day-to-day. The seals here can go on fishing trips for weeks at a time, ranging as far as the coast of Denmark or Holland. It’s tempting to think of animals we see locally as ‘ours’ but it’s easy to forget that nature knows few boundaries, and animals will go wherever food, mates or undisturbed resting places (like the haul-out here) are available.

Our fortnightly low-tide bird counts are another reminder of nature without boundaries. Many of the birds we see here are fleeing colder weather elsewhere, be it from up in the Arctic circle or from hill tops closer to home. We know from rings that there’s a Finnish-hatched curlew holding a winter territory near the end of Inches Road and many of ‘our’ other wading birds will also have come from a long way north.

They may even overwinter here one year, and choose somewhere completely different the next year. A couple of years ago we saw these black-tailed godwits, which had been ringed in a previous winter in Ireland.

While heading down Inches Road to do our bird count, we noticed several smashed cockle and mussel shells on the road. No, Molly Malone hadn’t been pushing her barrow through Newburgh instead of Dublin, the culprit was a bit closer to home. Both gulls and crows have learned to pick up shellfish and drop them onto a hard surface to smash them open. And the bonus of dropping them onto tarmac is you can’t miss, whereas if you drop them on the beach there’s a chance they’ll hit a sandy or muddy bit and won’t break.

Away from the estuary, while out clearing drains, we took the opportunity to check in on the dead whale at North Broadhaven. While it’s always sad to see such a magnificent creature dead, it’s also interesting to see how it has decomposed over the past couple of years. This natural process helps put nutrients back into the marine environment and the carcass of the whale has fed a lot of creatures as it beaks down. Quite a change!

In fact, change is one of the few constants in the universe. And we certainly see that, with the changing seasons, the weather and the constant throughput of wildlife. Especially the weather – we’ve had a bit of everything this week, for a soaking most days, to clear nights and overnight frosts.

Still, this isn’t a bad view to open the door to in a morning. But, as they say, ‘red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning’… I’m off to light the fire and boil the kettle before the next lot of rain arrives!

The third week of November at Forvie saw the winds swinging to the north, bringing a blast of Arctic air to north-east Scotland. With temperatures plunging, and with snow, sleet and frost dominating proceedings, it appeared that winter had arrived early on the Reserve. In its suddenness and timing, this cold snap represented an uncanny mirror-image of late November last year, in both cases following on from a mild and nondescript autumn.

Here in the North-east, the open landscapes and huge skies make it easy to see what’s coming. Much of the sleet and snow this week arrived in the form of heavy squally showers, which you could see approaching for miles in advance. They looked spectacular in the distance, and you just knew that within half an hour, you were going to be on the receiving end.

I tried to photograph one of these incoming squalls early in the week, but was foiled by a combination of the cold and a recalcitrant ‘smart’ (sic) phone. Somehow the phone had burned through 35% of its battery power inside an hour (I’m not sure if it was shivering, or perhaps trying to boil some water or something), and the resultant ‘battery saver mode’ meant I couldn’t see the screen when attempting to take a photo with the last 3% of its battery life. Or at least that’s my excuse for the classic fingers-over-the-lens masterpiece reproduced below.

When the squalls did arrive, they were sharp and mean. Few people besides the Reserve staff were out and about in these conditions, but the few we did meet were dressed up like Kenny from South Park. At least it reminded you that you were alive!

We’ve remarked in the past about how November is the month for all the odd jobs and unglamorous tasks which are essential to life on the Reserve. One such job that we started to tackle this week was the removal of some redundant fencing in South Forvie. The fencing in question was a semi-permanent enclosure designed to protect nesting Eiders which, upon completion of the fence a number of years ago, decided to push off to the ternery and nest there instead. Honestly, you can take a horse to water and all that…

Old fences are a blight on the landscape, and not just in the aesthetic sense. They pose a collision risk to deer and flying birds, as well as an entanglement risk. Countless mammals and birds fall victim to fence collisions every year – and given that old fences may remain in the environment for decades after falling into disrepair, the butcher’s bill across the whole country is very high indeed. So with this particular fence no longer fulfilling any practical use, it’s best that we remove it from the environment altogether. And what better week to get started?!

The comprehensive soaking we received during the course of one such day’s work led to a familiar scene later on in front of the cottage fire. It’s on days like these that having warm and dry feet is thought of as a privilege, rather than being taken for granted.

As many folk take great delight in telling us on a regular basis, Reserve staff have The Best Job In The World. And while I’m not about to argue with that, the cold reality doesn’t totally accord with the warm rosy-tinted image. After spending two days hauling rusty fencing-wire out of the long grass, we spent the next day clearing ditches in the sleet. Living the dream or what?

Our vehicular steed for the ditching job was a Maxus electric pickup truck, currently outbased at Forvie for off-road trials. If successful, it’s likely that this sort of vehicle will eventually supersede the older diesel-engined type throughout the NatureScot fleet, leading to a reduction in our carbon footprint. First impressions were that it performed creditably over the rough Rockend track, though it won’t get a real workout until next week when we’ll put it to the test on the soft sand of Forvie beach.

Meanwhile we also undertook, in railway parlance, some ‘gauging trials’ – i.e. checking to see if it’ll fit through certain gaps, in order to determine its ‘route availability’. Catriona was in the driving seat when it breezed through the bollards at Waterside car park, with all of 25 mm to spare each side once the wing-mirrors were folded in. Easy!

Later in the week the snow and sleet, part-thawed, gave way to a hard frost overnight from Thursday into Friday. Getting around the Reserve, either by vehicle or on foot, required a great deal of care; this was not the time to be hurrying.

Frosty conditions represent the best opportunities to see Kingfishers at Forvie. Typically found around shallow fresh waters, Kingfishers can be frozen off some of their favoured inland haunts during cold snaps, and may head to the coast where the salty waters remain unfrozen. Catriona photographed this one on the Foveran Burn at Newburgh, taking a break between fishing expeditions.

Another classic hard-weather species to put in an appearance this week was the Snow Bunting, with several lone birds appearing at different spots around the Reserve and the village of Collieston (though I suppose there’s a chance that all the records involved the same ‘teleporting’ individual). While flocks of Snow Buntings can be skittish and difficult to approach, solitary individuals are often endearingly tame, preferring to sit tight rather than fly away. The chance of an encounter with one of these little birds, tough and hardy yet beautiful and approachable, is one of the up-sides of being out on the Reserve on the bitterly cold days such as we’ve experienced this week.

Finally, it looks like the breeding season for Forvie’s Grey Seals may be drawing to a close. The second of the two pups – the diminutive ‘class of 2025’ – is now just about weaned, and will soon be making its own way in the world. It’s not impossible that we may get one or two more births before the year ends, but with each week that passes, this is looking more and more unlikely. Still, two pups are better than none!

And on that note, I’m away to the fireside to see if my socks have dried out yet. See you next week – and wrap up warm in the meantime.

A colleague recently remarked to me about a strange phenomenon which occurs annually at Forvie, seemingly in contravention of the laws of physics and the space-time continuum. Basically, the summer here seems to go on forever, while the autumn comes and goes in the wink of an eye. This was an interesting observation, and one with which I was absolutely inclined to agree. It brought to mind the old analogy likening life to a toilet roll: the nearer the end you get, the faster it goes.

In truth, this perception is probably due to two things, namely the high seasonal workload and the endless daylight on the Reserve in summer. In autumn, by contrast, the former has simmered down somewhat, and the latter diminishes rapidly from one week to the next. Consequently the days pass quickly, and somehow we find ourselves in the last couple of weeks of autumn 2025.

One of the best things about late autumn is that dawn and dusk occur at times of the day when you can actually appreciate them (and not at 3am and 11pm respectively, as in high summer). While the previous Tuesday had produced a beautiful sunset over Sand Loch, this Tuesday offered up a fabulously still dawn, with the water of the loch mirror-calm under a pastel sky just before sunrise.

Early morning at Sand Loch can sometimes produce sightings of wildlife that you won’t see through the middle of the day. This might be a fishing Otter, a Water Vole motoring across the outflow ditch, or perhaps some roosting waterfowl waking up and heading out on their morning commute. Prominent among the latter recently have been Goosanders, with birds tending to flight into the loch in the last dregs of evening light, and departing in the dawn. This means they tend to slip under the radar most of the time, but a recent dawn count of the loch revealed a whopping 81 Goosanders at roost. Just half an hour later, as the sun rose, not a single one remained.

The reason for my slightly-earlier-than-usual start on Tuesday was a day’s work off-site at Muir of Dinnet NNR. No fallen trees to deal with this time, though; instead it was a day spent driving the Giant Snail (aka the Softrak cut-and-collect machine). Reserve manager Simon had arranged a loan of the machine to carry out the annual cut of Dinnet’s species-rich grassland. This operation is basically a massively scaled-up version of what we do with the meadow around the Forvie Centre each autumn, stripping away the nutrients to suppress the rank grasses, thereby favouring the growth of wild flowers.

Despite looking like something out of Thunderbirds, the Softrak is a straightforward machine to operate, with the controls more reminiscent of a child’s toy than an agricultural machine. And although the driving position is a bit awkward, with the operator having to lean to one side to see past the chute and keep an eye on the height of the cutting bar, it has a cosy cab with an excellent heater. This was very much appreciated given that the weather deteriorated through the day; after that stunning morning at Sand Loch, I ended up driving back to Forvie in heavy rain and fog. But that’s November!

As well as managing the wild flower meadow, we also used the Softrak to cut four experimental plots in the neighbouring grass fields in the hope that they may be occupied by Lapwings in the 2026 breeding season. This was a speculative move, with no guarantee of success – but nothing ventured and all that! We’ll keep our fingers crossed come the spring – watch this space.

Back at Forvie, we welcomed students and staff from the University of Aberdeen for their annual environmental sampling field course on Thursday. As usual, the Reserve staff were drafted in to help the bird-survey groups with their work, particularly in terms of species identification. And as usual, we had a cold north-easter and intermittent rain for company!

The bird groups were stationed respectively at the Tin Hut on the golf course at Newburgh, at Waulkmill bird hide, and in a lay-by overlooking the Snub. Of the three groups, the latter definitely drew the short straw, having neither a seat nor a roof. Fieldwork, like life, isn’t always fair!

The field course started just after 0700 on Thursday morning, finishing at about 1530, and thus making use of all the available daylight. For most of the day the tide, like the autumn itself, was ebbing, exposing more and more food-rich mud: an all-you-can-eat buffet for wading-birds.

This is probably the one occasion in the year that we get to spend the whole day observing the comings and goings on the estuary. And each time we do this, we’re given a reminder (as if we needed one) of what a remarkably rich environment the estuary provides. While you’d be forgiven for thinking that the barren-looking mudflats were little more than a wet and salty desert, nothing could be further from the truth.

While migratory waterfowl are hard to miss at Forvie in the autumn, the same can’t be said of migrant songbirds. The autumn of 2025 has generally been very poor for small migrants, with even supposedly ‘common’ species in very short supply. In some autumns we may see thousands of Redwings pass through in a single day, but this year the most I’ve seen on any one day was twenty-five – otherwise it’s just been ones and twos here and there. This week saw a handful arriving from the east, before quickly melting away inland; typically shy, they are notoriously difficult to observe at close quarters.

If, however, you are lucky enough to see a Redwing well – which requires either good fieldcraft or good fortune – they are remarkably handsome and charismatic birds. Treasure that moment!

Rather more approachable were the Long-tailed Tits that turned up unexpectedly in Collieston in the week. We see these reasonably frequently at Waterside and Logie Buchan, but in North Forvie and Collieston they remain surprisingly rare. They also rate very highly in the cuteness stakes.

Lastly, a visit to Logie Buchan bridge at the end of a mid-week waterfowl census found the Smew still present and correct on the river, and also revealed these rather lovely little mushrooms growing on the parapet of the bridge. As I’ve frequently admitted in the past, mycology is not my strong suit as a naturalist, but I think these are Moss Bells, or Galerina sp. to give them their scientific name. But I may of course be wrong…

I had never knowingly seen these delightful little mushrooms before, though of course in my ignorance I may have overlooked them on countless occasions in the past. Still, they stand as proof that even at this tail end of the year, as the autumn ebbs away, there are discoveries to be made in the natural world. Make the most of that daylight!

John Keats has oft been quoted in our writings on the Forvie blog, having famously described autumn as the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’. In our part of the world, however, a more appropriate description might be something like ‘season of gales and meteorological violence’ – but hey, let’s not allow reality to get in the way of romance all the time. And anyway, this past week has, genuinely, featured a lot of mist.

Actually, and in typical North-east fashion, it’s technically been fog rather than mist. The difference between the two, from a meteorologist’s perspective, is simply the density. If visibility is over 1,000 metres, then it’s mist. But if the visibility is less than 1,000 metres – which it was at Forvie for a big chunk if this week – then it’s fog.

For a couple of days, our visibility was well below 100 metres, never mind 1,000. Driving was a hazardous business, and even being out on foot was a strangely alien experience. The Reserve was wrapped in a thick blanket of silence; the stillness of the air was somewhat unnerving, given that we’re used to being lashed by the wind almost every day of the year. Even my ‘commute’ between the Reserve office and Collieston – a half-mile walk which I’ve undertaken at least twice a day for more than seventeen years – felt bizarrely unfamiliar.

All that moisture in the air led to prodigious dewfall. The grassland of the Reserve was saturated as if by a prolonged downpour, with all the spiders’ webs bejewelled with tiny beads of water. This was a dense, ‘searching’ sort of moisture that found its way through the slightest weakness in your boots; not for the first time this year, and probably not the last either, the house was bedecked with bedraggled socks on the radiators, and boots stuffed with newspaper steaming by the fireside.

The damp understorey of Waterside Wood this week played host to some late examples of fungi. These Parasol Mushrooms were beginning to look somewhat past their best…

…while some of Forvie’s wildlife had evidently been having a nibble at these Plums-and-Custard mushrooms – and who could blame them, given the delicious-sounding name?

By way of contrast, the following species has arguably the most revolting name in the entire natural world. Meet the Dog Sick Slime Mould.

Despite the family resemblance, a slime mould is not a fungus, but rather a colony of single-celled organisms known as protozoans. Like fungi, however, the bits we can actually see are the fruiting bodies which produce the reproductive spores. This particular species is usually found on damp grass, where it feeds on tiny particles of organic matter, and can even move around to find food. Thus slime moulds effectively do a great clean-up job in the natural world, while not causing any harm to the grasses on which they are often found. It’s just a shame about the name!

Casting our eyes up rather than down for a moment, a prominent species in our area this week has been the Starling. Despite being much-declined in recent decades, they are still very plentiful in our corner of the world; some impressive flocks have been present around the Forvie Centre all week, probably comprised of both Scottish-bred birds and Continental immigrants. Starlings are one of those ‘Marmite species’, in that folk seem to either love or loathe them – or, depending on the circumstances, perhaps a bit of both.

I must confess that I personally have a love-hate relationship with them as well. They’re far from being my favourite birds when brash parties of them gatecrash the garden feeding-station; they monopolise the feeders, throw the food everywhere, and remorselessly bully all the other birds. And they’re bad-tempered to boot, constantly squabbling and squealing at each other, their harsh voices somewhere between tortured metal and fingernails down the blackboard. Trust me, it’s not a soothing soundtrack by which to settle down at the laptop, and I often find myself slamming the door to shut out the racket, so I can hear myself think. Sorry, I love my birds, but give me a Chiffchaff or a Blackcap any day.

But on the flip side, Starlings en-masse are one of the planet’s great wildlife spectacles. Anyone who has ever been to a big Starling roost (or ‘murmuration’ in popular terminology) can hardly fail to have been impressed. Even the feeding flocks at the Forvie Centre this week have been breathtaking, lining up along the telegraph wires like musical notation before swarming down into the pasture – and they weren’t even ‘murmurating’. Judge for yourself in the following couple of short videos – I give you the Starling, the ‘Marmite bird’.

Speaking of Blackcaps, a small number of these distinctive warblers with their neat little skull-caps have continued to pass through this week. They, and the accompanying immigrant Blackbirds, remain grateful for any ‘mellow fruitfulness’ on offer in local hedges, copses and gardens.

A full moon during the week (the ‘Beaver moon’, apparently) brought about some conspicuously high tides on the Ythan Estuary. The island of Inch Geck, in the middle reaches of the estuary between Waterside and Waulkmill, all but disappeared, and the golf course at Newburgh was partially flooded too. A couple of the tees and fairways nearest the river were completely inundated, and the usual golfing clientele were replaced by a variety of waterfowl, all cashing in on the unusual feeding opportunities. It’s an ill wind and all that…

For all the preponderance of mist, fog and rain, the week wasn’t a complete write-off. Early in the week we did in fact enjoy a short period of sunshine, and Tuesday evening at least produced a fine sunset. It’s largely been an overcast sort of autumn: this week, somebody told me that last month was the dullest October on record, and for once I’m not talking about the lack of rare migrant birds. As a consequence, the rare clear evenings have been appreciated all the more.

That just about concludes this week’s missives then. See you again next week, folks – or at least I will if this fog ever lifts!

Since hitting the ‘publish’ button last time around, another working week has flown by in approximately five minutes, and with it October has receded into the rearview mirror. I hope to think that this apparently rapid passage of time has more to do with us working hard than getting older, but who knows? In any case, the year 2025 is indisputably growing old: ten months down, and just two to go.

The last week of October continued the pattern of the rest of the month; that is to say, there was actually no pattern at all. Cold, warm, wet, windy, settled, sunny, and generally just confusing – and sometimes all on the same day. But still a great week to be out of doors – aren’t they all though?

Late autumn, of course, is high season for Forvie’s Grey Seals. Their pupping season starts in earnest during late October, and notwithstanding a couple of earlier, unsuccessful, premature births, we have now had our first successful birthings of the 2025 season.

At the time of writing, there are two pups present at the haul-out. The eldest of these is about two weeks old, and belongs to a female known by local observers as ‘Eagle’. This particular female has been pupping at Forvie for several years now, and as a relatively experienced mum, she makes the whole process look easy. Her pup is looking exceptionally healthy and well-fed, and it won’t be long now before it’s fully weaned. Grey Seal pups are weaned within just 17-21 days of birth, after which they are fully independent, in spite of their small size and helpless appearance. This is due to the high energy content of the mother’s milk, which allows for rapid development and weight gain. All that weight that the pups put on during their first three weeks of life will help to sustain them as they set out on their own, and learn to fish for themselves.

The second pup arrived just a few days ago, and is consequently a good deal smaller than the first at present. These first few days of life are when the pups are most vulnerable, and without wishing to sound like a broken record, it’s worth re-iterating the importance of minimising disturbance to the haul-out at this critical time. Seasonal signage on the Reserve helps direct visitors away from the haul-out area, and we’re grateful to visitors for respecting this arrangement.

If you want to catch a glimpse of the pups, as well as taking in the spectacle of the haul-out as a whole, the best way to do so is from the splendid boardwalk at Newburgh, courtesy of the Newburgh & Ythan Community Trust. I appreciate that regular readers are probably all well aware of this arrangement already – but please help us spread the word, for the good of both people and seals!

Also present near the seal haul-out are Forvie’s remaining Eiders, whose numbers typically decline through the autumn as they head southwards down the coast to the Tay Estuary or beyond. We count them roughly every second week throughout the autumn and winter, and sure enough, our recent counts revealed that numbers had dropped from over 600 in the first week of October to just 270 in the last.

Also undertaken fortnightly are the corresponding low-tide counts of various wildfowl and wader species, with one such count taking place on Wednesday of this week. For once we had a decent day’s weather for the job, albeit with a bitterly cold north-wester blowing across the estuary, and the light was pretty good too. All we then needed was for the birds to co-operate, and sit still while we counted them…

…and not take off two-thirds of the way through – sigh.

Thankfully not all species are as jumpy and nervous as our Golden Plover flock; others such as Turnstones are much more obliging, and are approachable almost to the point of being tame. This makes life substantially easier for the fieldworker!

While out for the count, so to speak, we espied the unmistakable tracks of an Otter on the mudflats at the mouth of the Tarty Burn. Being largely nocturnal (or at least crepuscular) and discreet in their habits, we don’t see Otters nearly as often as we see their tracks and signs. But it’s nice to know that they’re out there all the same!

These wildfowl-and-wader counts start at the Ythan mouth, next to the seal haul-out, and end at Logie Buchan bridge near the town of Ellon, which is essentially the upper tidal reach of the estuary. Here the water is fresher than is the case further downstream (where there is more saline influence from the sea), and subsequently this part of the estuary sometimes plays host to species that favour fresh water over salt or brackish. One such example is the Smew, a small diving-duck closely related to the Goosander and Red-breasted Merganser which are ever-present on the estuary. In contrast to the two more familiar species, Smew occur less than annually here, and it’s always a bit of an occasion when you find one. Better still, Ron Macdonald was soon on the scene with his camera, and kindly allowed me to reproduce the following (beautiful, as usual) photograph.

With the clocks having been set back, dusk occurs all too early on these late-autumn afternoons. One of the biggest challenges with the wader counts in November through January will be finding enough hours of useable daylight to get the job done. These counts can only be carried out at low tide – and ideally when the weather isn’t trying to kill you either – and combined with the limited daylight available, this fairly narrows down your options. It’s a case of having to cram the counts in whenever the opportunity arises – and working as quickly as you can on the day!

One compensation for working up until dusk is that you get to jam in on the evening flight of wild swans and geese – one of life’s pleasures for sure!

And by the time you get home, there’s a chance to enjoy the North-east’s fabulous dark skies for a moment, before lighting the fire and putting the kettle on. Every cloud and all that!

A bit of a sad note on which to finish up this week. At the end of October we bade a fond farewell to seasonal warden Joe, whose season’s work with us has now come to an end. For the second year running, Joe has brought to the Forvie team a huge amount of energy, hard yakka and bonhomie, and we can’t thank him enough for his efforts, or indeed his company. We’ve been very fortunate at Forvie in recent years to have had some brilliant young seasonal staff pass through the doors, and none more so than Joe. You’ll be missed by us all!

So here’s wishing you all the very best, mate, and good luck with whatever comes next – and I’m sure we’ll be seeing you again!

By the time this piece goes to press, the clocks will have been set back their requisite hour, and once again we find ourselves in the latter stages of the northern autumn. In the natural world, this part of the season brings with it a new sense of urgency for those species still on their travels. No more the lazy days and leisurely wanderings of August and September; now, with the day-lengths rapidly shortening and the temperatures dropping, if you’ve got somewhere to go, you’d better get a move on. This is the business end of the migration season.

Sure enough, the pace has quickened noticeably this past few days, with various comings and goings noted across the Reserve throughout the week. Waterfowl have been particularly conspicuous, with huge gatherings of Pink-footed Geese on the estuary numbering well into the thousands, and a steady southward trickle of Whooper Swans providing a haunting musical backing-track to the working week. Meanwhile, a south-easterly blow and some rain on Monday delivered an arrival of small migrants to our shores too, notably Blackcaps, which were present on the Reserve and in the gardens of Collieston in substantial numbers. For these tired and hungry travellers, any soft fruit was gratefully seized upon, and here at author’s HQ we helped them out as best we could.

For small songbird migrants such as these, the North Sea is a formidable obstacle to have to negotiate; any navigational error, or deterioration in the weather during the crossing, may prove fatal. We know that for all the birds that successfully make it ashore, others will have perished en-route, disappearing without trace in the salt-water desert. Just occasionally this reality is brought home to us with eye-opening clarity, such as on Thursday this week when I walked a three-quarter-mile stretch of Forvie’s shore. Here on the strand-line, among the seaweeds and general flotsam, were the sorry remains of at least 19 thrushes (a mixture of Redwings, Fieldfares and Blackbirds) that had failed to complete the crossing. That their remains had washed ashore perhaps indicates that they were heartbreakingly close to the coast before succumbing to exhaustion – so near and yet so far. But that’s life as a long-distance migrant.

Larger species, despite having an advantage in terms of bodyweight and fuel reserves, are still subject to the same hazards. On the same stretch of beach were the remains of a Long-eared Owl, having met the same fate as its fellow travellers. Not for the first time we’re reminded of the hard lives lived by wild creatures, and increasingly so in a world so radically altered by humanity: who knows how the changing climate and continuing loss of natural habitats will affect migratory species such as these in future.

Even those lucky individuals that do make landfall aren’t yet out of danger. Tired migrants are easy meals for predators, and this Peregrine on the cliffs near Hackley Bay would undoubtedly have been awake to the opportunities presented by the autumn migration season.

Migratory waterbirds, of course, have the huge advantage of being able to put down on the sea for a rest if they so choose. One such species is the Slavonian Grebe, one of which turned up on Sand Loch on Tuesday. This is a scarce bird here, which we see just once or twice a year on average, so I was keen to capture a photo of it for the record. Local naturalist and photographer-extraordinaire Ron Macdonald had the same idea, but with somewhat different results. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which of the following photos was taken by Ron, and which was taken by me. No prizes though.

As we’ve said in the past, it’s not just birds that are migrants. Amphibians are short-distance travellers, commuting between their summer spawning grounds and their cosy winter lie-ups, and we’re seeing the tail end of that just now. Both Common Toad and Common Frog were noted this week, and in each case we wondered whether it would be our last sighting of the year.

From migrants to mushrooms now, and the Heath Trail on Monday produced a fine selection of fungi, mostly among the short grass of the path-sides. I’m the first to admit that my mycological knowledge is rather limited (actually, if I’m being truthful, it’s utter pants), so I won’t attempt to put names to the following. Suffice to say, though, there was a wonderful array of colours, forms and textures on show. And if any readers would care to help me out with the identification, please get in touch!

One of the few species I can actually identify is the Blackening Waxcap, which also goes by the name of Witch’s Hat based on its conical shape. This is a fascinating species due to its dramatic change in appearance between emergence and maturity; it’s difficult to believe that the following two photos depict the same species.

I’m also going to have a go at this one, which I believe is the Dusky Puffball… but once again I’d be happy to stand corrected by any readers whose knowledge out-rates mine (not a difficult feat, to be honest). For me, fungi are a salutary (and annually-repeated) reminder of how little I really know about the natural world.

Insect news tends to be a bit hard to come by at the hinner-end of the year, so it was nice to have at least a couple of items on which to report. First was this distinctive-looking Dipteran (two-winged fly) at the Forvie Centre, which turned out to be a Noon Fly. This is a species associated with cattle, which makes sense given the presence of beasts in the neighbouring park (sorry, cows in the neighbouring field, for non-North-east Scotland readers). In any case, I thought it a rather handsome species, with a nice easy-to-remember name to boot.

This brightly-coloured little caterpillar initially puzzled me, before I realised it was an early instar (=early larval stage) of the Northern Eggar moth. This is a familiar species on the heath at Forvie, but we more often see the much larger late instars – perhaps because they’re that much more conspicuous.

Lastly, a surprise find in our garden on the edge of the Reserve was this Comma butterfly, which was enjoying the apples we provided for the hungry Blackcaps. As far as we know, it’s the first ever recorded in the Forvie/Collieston area, and once again I was determined to capture a few photos for the record. This was easy enough while it was having a feed…

…but less so when it decided to fly up onto our chimney stack for a bask in the sun, necessitating using my binoculars as a makeshift long lens for the phone camera – this takes a steady hand and a good deal of luck!

And so an action-packed week comes to an end. About three more weeks of peak autumn migration lie ahead – who knows what they might bring, and what stories remain to be told. Stay tuned!