Running a National Nature Reserve like Forvie is basically a delicate balancing act. On the one side we are tasked with protecting the Reserve’s wildlife and landscape, and on the other we must provide a service for its visitors. In other words, places like Forvie must be run for the benefit of both wildlife and people. This appears straightforward enough when it’s written down, but the reality on the ground is really quite different.

The problematic bottom line is that we (humanity) are the reason that wildlife is in trouble in the first place. We tend to have a deleterious effect on nature wherever we go. This can be as a result of our direct interactions with nature, such as killing wild creatures for food or profit (think the great whales, or indeed most of the world’s megafauna) and our use of land (e.g. clearing natural habitats for our crops, livestock and developments). And it can also occur through indirect effects, such as climate change or pollution of land and water. Put simply, you and I are generally bad news for nature (well, not just you and I personally, but I digress).

Humans on the whole aren’t daft, and we have recognised this problem for a very long time. Nature reserves – ostensibly places of refuge for what’s left of our beleaguered wildlife – are one of the ways we have tried to mitigate for all the damage we’ve caused in the wider natural world. Here in the UK we have more nature reserves (albeit mainly small ones) than many other countries in the world; it’s perhaps not a coincidence that we are also one of the most nature-depleted countries on the entire globe. Maybe all those nature reserves are proof of a guilty conscience!

For all the damage that we’ve already done, and continue to do, we still paradoxically think of ourselves as a ‘nation of animal lovers’. This is reflected in the number of us who keep pets. As we’ve mentioned in the past, other writers have suggested that this is a proxy for our lost connection with nature. But the monstrous irony is that our pets can also have a destructive effect on the natural world – even in supposedly ‘protected’ places like nature reserves.

Last year Forvie received about 75,000 human visitors (and that’s just on ‘our’ side of the River Ythan; this doesn’t include the thousands of visitors to Newburgh beach). A great many of those visitors brought their dogs with them. And why wouldn’t you? The Reserve offers great walks through an extensive open landscape, as well as having one of the best beaches on the entire planet. And once you’re on the Reserve, there’s no road traffic to worry about, nor any farm livestock to consider. So an ideal place to let the dog have a run around, right?

Whoa, hold your huskies though! Just like our opening paragraph, this isn’t quite as straightforward as it appears. Far from being a barren wasteland, Forvie is home to a wide range of sensitive and threatened wildlife, of national and even international importance – which is what sets it aside from (for example) a country park, or a city greenspace. The Reserve is supposed to offer a sanctuary for this wildlife, away from the anthropogenic pressures on the wider countryside. But this only works if the people who visit Forvie are willing to show a degree of restraint and consideration – particularly when it comes to exercising their pets.

In basic terms, a dog is a predator. A very tame and cute and cuddly one in our eyes at least, but a predator it remains. Or at least that’s how other creatures view it. Wild birds and mammals don’t make the distinction between a Labrador and a Wolf; to them it’s just a predator, and they react accordingly – flee for your life. And at this time of year, this burns up crucial energy that wild creatures can ill afford to spare. The cumulative effects of regular disturbance – which sadly happens at Forvie on a daily basis – can be fatal.

For birds, seals and deer, disturbance by dogs during the breeding season can cause the abandonment and death of their young. That’s why we operate the dogs-on-leads policy from April through August each year. Adherence to this request is variable at the best of times, but people on the whole are quite understanding. Sadly though, this has led to a situation whereby folk think that as soon as August is over, it’s a free-for-all. Fact is, Forvie doesn’t stop being a nature reserve overnight, and sensitivities remain throughout the year: feeding and roosting birds, deer calves, seals (and other visitors, for that matter). The Reserve needs to be treated with respect right through the year.

What’s more, direct damage to the wildlife isn’t the only issue. We’re perpetually tearing out what’s left of our hair due to the profusion of pet-related litter on the Reserve. Chewed-up tennis balls, the exploded remains of rubber toys, little plastic bags full of poo, and then there’s the un-bagged stuff that we’re constantly treading in. The latest craze seems to be owners allowing their pets to dig cavernous, ankle-breaking holes in the footpaths, without ever thinking to stop them doing so, or to fill in the holes. Excuse me while I stand up from the keyboard for a moment and scream into space. Come on people, surely we’re better than this?!

By common consensus among Reserve staff, confronting dog owners about the behaviour of their pets on the Reserve is one of the surest ways of earning us a faceful of abuse. It’s an interesting piece of psychology: seemingly to question the behaviour of someone’s dog is tantamount to calling them out as a bad parent. Please be assured that this is never our intention; we only ever aim to safeguard the wildlife that we love, and are obliged to do so by our employment and the law. We’re not killjoys for the sake of it, we’re simply trying to protect the Reserve and its inhabitants.

Opposition and criticism isn’t a one-way street though. As I said earlier on, it’s a balancing act, and the ‘dogs versus wildlife’ dilemma can result in slings and arrows from both sides. On the one hand, dog owners tend to get irritable about us placing restrictions on their recreational activity, while on the other hand, passionate naturalists often complain that we’re not doing enough to prevent disturbance and damage to wildlife on the Reserve (which is supposed to be a protected site for wildlife, right?). Who’d be a nature reserve warden?!

The Scottish Outdoor Access Code is built upon a basis of ‘rights with responsibilities’. But it’s the second of these that’s the dealbreaker. Everyone knows they have a right of open access in the Scottish countryside – including in places like nature reserves – but the bit that gets forgotten is that this only applies if that access is taken responsibly. And in Forvie’s case, this means taking care to ensure your visit doesn’t harm any of the things that make it such a special place.

A key point to make before I sign off is that we’re immensely grateful to those visitors (and their dogs of course) who do treat the Reserve and its wildlife with the respect it deserves, not least because you’re setting the example for others to follow. Thank you – on behalf of both the wildlife, and our own sanity.

Right, that’s me done for the week – away for a lie down in a darkened room now…

When I was growing up, I often used to hear my older relatives speak truisms such as the one I’ve used for this week’s title. ‘Count your blessings’ was another one I heard frequently, such pronouncements being guaranteed to elicit an eye-roll and a deep, long-suffering sigh. Young people aren’t generally inclined to hang on every word of their elders, and I for one tended to greet these pearls of wisdom with a smile and a cheery “yeah, whatever you say, Nan…” or something similar. But the passage of time does strange things to our perception of the world – I think it’s called ‘perspective’ – and decades later you suddenly come to the realisation that many of these sayings contained an irritating ring of truth.

I say ‘irritating’ because of the missed opportunities. This is a nature blog of course, and it’s of nature that I speak here. Even as the aforementioned naïve youngster I was fascinated by the natural world, and captivated by the beauty of wild flowers, birds, butterflies and so on. Having moved around a lot as a child, I was also lucky enough to have lived in some superb places for nature. Being young and naïve however, I took such things for granted, and never stopped to think that one day they might be gone. If I had my time again, I’d make sure to really appreciate them, and milk every last drop.

I’ll give you an example. When I was seven years old, my family moved house to a place just outside the New Forest in southern England. Within ten minutes’ walk of our new home, I could stand on the towpath of the disused canal and listen to Nightingales singing. The crème de la crème of European songbirds, belting out this staggering, show-stopping song, just ten minutes away from the house. Sure, I enjoyed it at the time, but did I really appreciate how special this was? And how lucky I was? In truth I probably took it for granted; a common trait of the human condition.

What I didn’t know at the time, of course, was what the future held. Firstly that I’d eventually settle in North-east Scotland, where Nightingales are extremely rare (the last record in our region was, I think, in 2008). Secondly – and far more importantly – that Nightingales would disappear from great swathes of their former range in the UK, in common with so many other migratory (and indeed resident) songbirds. These things are in serious trouble, and their continued survival in doubt. They are hanging on in a handful of areas in the south and east.

In the 20-odd years since leaving home and making my own way in the world, I have heard Nightingale song on just one occasion, a rare spring holiday to Suffolk in 2017. It was a surprisingly emotional experience, standing on the heath in the pitch darkness with the air filled with that immense sound (for their size, Nightingales are unbelievably loud, made even more so by their habit of singing in the dead of night when everything else is quiet). I swore never to take anything in the natural world for granted ever again.

OK, we’ve gone off-piste a bit here, but I promise it’s all relevant. Back, then, to Forvie. The Reserve has now been my local patch for eighteen years (my ‘anniversary’ was last Wednesday). I’ve never seen a Nightingale here (yet!), but a wealth of other wildlife throughout the year makes this an incredible place for a keen naturalist to live and work. However, the difference between the young and naïve me of thirty years ago, and the grizzly and grumpy me of today, is that I now take none of it for granted.

The amount of change that has taken place in the natural world during my relatively short lifetime is almost mind-blowing. Changes in climate, land use, agricultural practice, population and recreational activity have all had their say. In terms of individual species, there have been winners and losers (sadly the latter outnumber the former), and the future is hard to read. The only certainty is that there will be even more change.

Consequently, this week’s take-home message (without wishing to make it sound too much like the ‘thought for the day’ off the radio) is to appreciate the wildlife around us while we can, and to help to safeguard it for the future – both ours and theirs. Indeed, this is what underpins our day-to-day work on the Reserve, and even our domestic lives outside of work. To that end, I’ll finish up with a few examples of ‘ones to watch’: things which we maybe don’t give a lot of thought, but are worthy of our attention – and which might not be around forever.

Bumblebees. We’re just coming up to that time of the year when the first bees – usually Buff-tailed or White-tailed Bumblebees – begin to emerge from their winter hibernation. As well as brightening our spring and summer days with their cheery colours and diligent perusal of the garden flowers, bees are critical pollinators of both wild plants and commercial crops. Without them, the terrestrial ecosystems of the world simply couldn’t function. And yet they are in massive decline and in need of our help and consideration. At home, you can help out by providing nectar-rich flowers and avoiding the use of harmful chemicals in your garden.

Tree Sparrows. We’re lucky to still have a reasonably healthy population of these cheeky and chirpy little fellows here in the North-east, as they are now extinct in many other parts of the UK. Having grown up ‘down south’, where Tree Sparrows had long since been extirpated, I was eighteen years old before I saw my first one, and even now the novelty of seeing them on the garden feeders hasn’t worn off. If you’re fortunate enough to have Tree Sparrows around your home, they can be encouraged to use nesting-boxes affixed to trees, fenceposts or buildings; an entrance-hole diameter of about 30 mm is ideal.

Curlew. Still a very familiar sight locally – 600 or more may be present on the estuary during the winter – but sadly a species in headlong decline. This is now one of the most threatened of all UK breeding birds; we can only hope their fortunes are better in mainland Europe (where many of our wintering Curlew spend their summers). The cry of the Curlew is one of the most beautiful and evocative sounds in the entire natural world – enjoy it while you can, and in the meantime help them out by allowing them to roost and feed undisturbed when you visit the Reserve.

Common Toads. Another species that’s still very plentiful here, but once again, this isn’t the case everywhere you go. Toads depend on wetlands for breeding, and undisturbed damp places for hibernation; both of these habitats tend to get swept away by development and agricultural ‘improvement’. The proliferation of the motor vehicle hasn’t helped the poor old Toad’s case either. But visit the Reserve on a damp day in summer, and it’s like taking a step back in time to when these characterful creatures were abundant in the wider countryside. And not only are they endearingly ugly-attractive, but they’re great garden pest-controllers too. Long may they survive with us.

I could go on and on with further examples, but the theme remains the same. Don’t take these things for granted. Hold on to them, cherish them, and do everything you can to help save them. Turns out that dear old Nan was right all along.

…or you might frighten it away again! But the signs have been there in this past week, written into the daily comings and goings across the Reserve, that the seasons are getting ready to turn. It’s always a bit dangerous publishing musings such as these, however, as there’s a chance that you may in due course get made to look like a right plonker. Winter often has a sting in the tail (remember the Beast from the East a few years back?), and it’s a brave meteorologist who declares that we’re past the worst of it. For a few days this week, though, we quietly allowed ourselves to believe.

After the botanical doldrums of midwinter, it’s always a relief to report upon the first stirrings-into-life in the plant kingdom. Snowdrops are the most obvious protagonists in this respect, and at Sand Loch Corner (among other places) they are now well out in flower. Nothing says optimism quite like a patch of Snowdrops bravely pushing their way out of the frosty earth, but they survive on more than optimism alone. Snowdrops contain a form of natural antifreeze; it remains to be seen whether this year’s crop of flowers will need it!

More subtle are the leaves of Lesser Celandine, one of our very earliest native wild flowers. Heart-shaped and deep glossy green, they may be picked out by the sharp-eyed observer on shady grass banks or beneath hedges and trees. At Forvie they occur around the visitor centre and among the scrub at Sand Loch, and it won’t be long now until the emergence of their unmistakable yellow flowers, looking like fallen yellow stars among the shadows.

There are audible as well as visible clues that change is around the corner. Down at Waterside Wood, particularly at either end of the day, the air is filled with the clamorous chorus of Rooks. Being members of the crow family, their individual voices are not the most melodic, yet en-masse they produce a strangely pleasing, almost comforting blanket of sound. So much so that in the 19th Century, the gentry actively encouraged Rooks to settle around their homes by planting copses of suitable nesting-trees; the presence of a rookery was thought a fashionable addition to the grounds of the Victorian stately home. Certainly in the north of Scotland, some of the stands of fine old Sycamores found around country houses are the result of such plantings. Later on, of course, the Rook fell out of favour once again, reverting to its ordinary status of perceived agricultural pest, and being persecuted as such. The fickle nature of fashion!

At Waterside, the deliberate removal of Sitka Spruce, combined with the unscheduled thinning of the woodland canopy by winter storms, have served to produce a wood most suitable for a rookery. Rooks are among the earliest of all birds to commence their nesting season, with February typically being the month when things kick off. Consequently, if you take a stroll through Waterside Wood just now, you’d be hard pressed not to notice the towering, tottering platforms of sticks in the Sycamores, with their owners cawing and chorusing and wheeling overhead.

Waterside’s Rooks share their lofty domain with a breeding population of Grey Herons. This often comes as a surprise to people who can’t imagine these gangling birds, all long legs and long neck, clambering around in the tree canopy. But this is exactly what they do, and just like their corvid neighbours, they assemble a rough platform of sticks in the treetops. While the Rooks favour the Sycamores in the wood, the Grey Herons prefer the denser cover of the Sitka Spruce trees that grow mainly to the riverward side of the track. Thus if you’re walking south through the wood, the soundtrack appears as if in stereo: the cawing of the rookery in your left ear, and the strange honking and clanking of the heronry in your right.

If you’re lucky enough to get a close-up view of one of Waterside’s Herons, their change of appearance from dowdy winter plumage to breeding condition will be apparent. The whitening neck and bright orange-yellow bill are sure signs that for these early nesters, the year is indeed advancing at pace.

On the adjacent estuary, at least one Little Egret was present this week. A recent colonist from the south, this species has recently begun to nest in southern Scotland, and it’s surely only a matter of time before they do likewise in our native North-east. Little Egrets often nest within Grey Heron colonies, and needless to say we’ll be keeping a close eye on the goings-on at Waterside in this next few years. For as someone famously said, the times they are a-changing.

Elsewhere in the bird world, there are other sounds on the airwaves to suggest a shift in the seasons. On anything approaching a fine day, the local Skylarks are now pouring out their full song, drenching the Reserve and its surrounds in a fine mist of tinkling music.

Meanwhile, in the woods at Waterside and the gardens of nearby Newburgh and Collieston, the nursery-rhyme ditty of the Great Tit’s song is also being heard with increasing frequency. What the song of the Great Tit lacks in finesse, it more than makes up for with its cheery enthusiasm.

In the normal scheme of things, the next singer to join the chorus will likely be Song Thrush or Blackbird – watch (or rather listen to) this space!

Danny’s latest count of the Grey Seal haul-out revealed a total of over 1,700 individuals, a further increase since the previous week’s total of 1,545. Again, a sign that things are moving on – though I’m still not going to mention the ‘s’ word in full.

A bit of miscellany with which to finish up. While working on replacing the Black Tern on the beach last week, we noticed (eventually) that the interpretation box which points out some of the interesting features of the area was missing. When we commissioned these boxes back in 2019 (part of former warden Dave Pickett’s legacy to Forvie), the idea was that they would provide low-cost and unobtrusive interpretation to visitors. In this they have been a great success, and have proved very popular as well as extremely robust. The only down side to the design, however, is that their low profile makes them rather vulnerable to blowing sand…

Cue a lot of poking around with a six-foot bamboo pole in an attempt to locate the missing box…

Eventually the errant box was found buried under about a foot of immaculate new sand-dune. As we observed last time, this is the joy of the dynamic landscape!

And never was the legend written across the top of the interpretation panel more appropriate…

Made it! Managed to get through the whole article without mentioning the ‘s’ word. Hopefully I’ve not jinxed anything then… we’ll just see how next week turns out!

This week’s title is how we (Reserve staff) tend to describe ourselves when asked the immortal question ‘so, what do you do for a living then?’ – after all, our official job titles (Nature Reserve Officer in my case) don’t really give much away. As the title suggests, and as regular readers of these pages will already know, we have to turn our hand to lots of different tasks and disciplines. We’re basically the human equivalent of a class 47 diesel locomotive, or a Swiss army knife: all-rounders, excellent at nothing, but competent at more or less anything. This past week has very much been a case in point.

Monday morning early saw me heading back to school, which felt a little bit daunting if I’m honest (it’s been a while). Banchory Academy was hosting an event in association with Developing the Young Workforce North East whereby local employers came into the school to speak to the S2 year group, to outline some of the ethical and moral dilemmas that crop up in the workplace. This was a bit of a departure from our usual science-based education work, but a great opportunity to get young people thinking.

These ethical dilemmas up for discussion included such trivial (!) issues as ‘do we interfere with nature, or let it take its course?’, and ‘do humans have an ethical obligation to prevent other species going extinct?’. This was backed up by some real-life examples from Forvie: having to select one species over another (e.g. ‘would you justify shooting Foxes in order to save Little Terns?’), or trying to resolve the conflicting interests of wildlife and people (e.g. protecting the seal haul-out versus open public access). The intent wasn’t to tell the pupils what to think, but rather to get them to analyse the issues, have a bit of debate and come to their own conclusions. Plenty food for thought for a Monday morning!

The event at Banchory was finished by lunchtime, so by way of complete contrast, I was out and about with the chainsaw during the afternoon that followed. Thankfully there wasn’t too much damage to clear up after Storm Eowyn the previous Friday (it seems that central and southern parts of Scotland came off far worse than the North-east), with just an hour or so’s work required at Waterside Wood to make safe the windblown limbs and precariously-suspended branches. From classroom to chainsaw in the same day: jacks of all trades indeed.

The odd-jobbing continued on Tuesday: having cleaned and serviced the chainsaw, and had a check of the water levels down at Cotehill Loch, we then headed down to the shores of Sand Loch to install a curious piece of infrastructure.

This odd construction is a duck tube: essentially a nest-box for ducks. Sand Loch has a very poor track record for breeding waterfowl, not least because of the amount of disturbance around its shores. The area is heavily used by dog-walkers (and much to our frustration, not all owners keep their dogs under proper control), and there are also natural ground predators such as Foxes and Badgers on the go. The duck tube, however, offers an opportunity for a duck to build its nest safely off the ground, thereby reducing the risk from four-legged raiders. Only time will tell if it works or not – but if it does, we may look to put up a few more of these around the loch in due course.

The following day we were back out onto the new Heath Trail route, in an attempt to sort out the one remaining wet section of path. With water levels being very high at the moment, this is the perfect time to work out what’s necessary in terms of drainage. As we’ve said before, we like to keep drainage work on the Reserve to the absolute minimum necessary, and thankfully this wasn’t a substantial job. All that was required was a short section of narrow ditch, with a bit of recycled pipe and a causeway over the top to take the path – hopefully followed by a few days’ dry weather to allow the sodden turfs to firm up.

Another odd job that’s been on the back burner for a long while is the replacement of the ‘Black Tern’ – the cut-out silhouette of a tern that acts as a waymarker where the southernmost corner of the Dune Trail meets the beach. This is the sort of task that we never have the time to get near during the summer months, and consequently it’s a classic winter job. Having stood for a good few years on the high exposed dunes, and been battered by the elements throughout, the old Black Tern made for a sorry sight indeed.

Miraculously, the three bolts that attached the Black Tern to its pole hadn’t rusted to powder for once, and all three were successfully unscrewed – I probably should have bought a scratchcard that evening. However, the plywood tern hadn’t worn quite so well, and it came off the pole in instalments.

Its replacement had actually been sitting in the workshop for a couple of weeks already. Drawn by hand and cut from plywood, it then received periodic coats of paint whenever one of us got a free half-hour. Given the sandblasting that this will receive when installed on its pole, at least four heavy coats of good-quality paint are required as a minimum.

Finally installed on its pole, we hope that it stands sentinel over its corner of the Dune Trail for a good few years before needing replaced once again. But who knows what the dunes and beach will look like by then? The pole upon which the tern is mounted has already been extended twice to account for the dunes building up around it. The fibreglass pole is affixed to a scaffolding tube, which in turn is affixed to a six-foot wooden post. Years ago, this wooden post stood on the top of the dune ridge itself. The joys of a dynamic landscape!

Amid all the miscellaneous estate-work tasks of the season, the routine work continues as well. Danny was out early on Thursday morning for one of the regular seal counts, which produced a total of 1,545 Grey Seals. This is quite a high count for this early stage of the year, but serves as a reminder that spring – which is when our seal numbers reach their peak – is just around the corner.

We sometimes describe our jobs as ‘a weird mix of field biologist, estate worker and people-person’. This week at Forvie has certainly had elements of all three. Our working life here may be eclectic (and sometimes downright eccentric) – but at least we don’t ever get the chance to get bored!

Change. It’s the one constant in the world, and life here at Forvie is no exception. In the relatively short time that I have worked on the Reserve (eighteen years), I have observed a huge amount of change in terms of its flora, fauna, hydrology and climate – all four of these things being inextricably linked together. But it’s the latter two that have had the most noticeable effect upon Forvie’s landscape in recent years, not least in terms of the amount of standing water now present on the heath. What was once a dry landscape is now being transformed before our eyes.

This is by no means a bad thing. Wetlands are great both for wildlife and for carbon capture, so we’re certainly not looking to drain the extra water away. In any case, the heath was extensively ditched and drained in the 20th Century when the Reserve doubled up as a sporting estate, in order to create the dry conditions favoured by Red Grouse. Now those old drains, no longer maintained, are gradually vegetating up. Consequently the landscape is slowly returning to something approaching a natural condition, rather than an artificially-maintained one.

The one obvious problem that this has created is the maintenance of footpaths. As we’ve mentioned before in these pages, the outer part of the Heath Trail has become untenable due to the frequency and severity of flooding in recent seasons. This would probably require a six-figure sum of money and some serious hard engineering to overcome, neither of which is desirable on a publicly-funded nature reserve.

The other real problem spot on the existing Heath Trail is the outflow drain from the Coastguard’s Pool, where the little wooden boardwalk crosses the drain. The retaining bank along which the path runs is gradually collapsing, and at some point is likely to give way completely. This bank is a man-made rather than natural feature (the pool was originally created as a flight-pond for shooting ducks) and it would again require hard engineering and an eye-watering sum of cash to sort it out. Time then for a rethink.

After consulting with various colleagues and others, we decided the only sensible long-term solution was to re-route the trail so that it follows the higher ground, rather than through the flood-prone dune slacks. Having done a lot of pacing around and weighing up the options on site, this week we bit the bullet and selected a route. This done, we then set about carving the new path into the landscape. Brushcutters at dawn!

Having strimmed our way along the new route, there remained the straightforward (!) task of relocating all the waymarkers that guide folk around the trail. There were eight of these to do, and I can tell you that digging the still-frozen ground was an absolute delight. Good exercise though, in all fairness.

When deciding where the new trail would go, we had to try and select a route that offered reasonably good underfoot conditions (i.e. dry and even), relatively gentle topography (i.e. not too many steep bits), and a decent view to boot. After all, nobody wants to walk a trail that doesn’t have a good outlook. I reckon the new route ticks all of these boxes, with the extra elevation offering a great view over the Coastguard’s Pool and the coastline beyond. Hopefully our visitors will agree with me, and will quite literally vote with their feet.

Ultimately we’re not stopping folk from using the old route (if anyone wants to go out for a walk wearing chest-waders, that’s entirely up to them), but we’re no longer promoting or maintaining it as a trail. In due course we will update our leaflets and maps as such. When all’s said and done, it’s not a massive change – but the work that we’ve done this week in re-routing the Heath Trail is a step towards future-proofing Forvie in the face of an uncertain climate.

Speaking of climate, during the Heath Trail works we were surprised to find this little moth on the wing. Not possessing much expertise on such things, I made the assumption that it was likely a Winter Moth (one of the few moth species to be on the wing in January), but I couldn’t be sure.

While I am no expert when it comes to moths, luckily I know someone who is. Cue an e-mail to Helen Rowe of Aberdeenshire Council’s Ranger Service, with whom we have worked on numerous occasions in the past (notably the popular Moth Morning events we sometimes stage during the summer). Helen informed us that instead of the expected Winter Moth, this was actually a Mottled Grey, a species that doesn’t usually emerge until late March. Apparently this moth, which overwinters as a pupa, can in exceptional cases emerge as early as late January, often associated with the first spell of mild weather after a cold snap. This would certainly tie in with the weather we’ve experienced here lately. So, an exceptionally early emergence – climate-change-related perhaps? Hard to say for sure, but a fascinating record in any case.

Earlier in the week, we had experienced some beautifully settled weather in which to carry out our fortnightly waterfowl census on the estuary. Both landscape and wildlife were looking superb in the winter sun, and Catriona filled her boots full of photographs in the brilliantly sharp light.

We were also treated to a rare sighting of a Kingfisher perched on one of the old navigation posts in the river channel. We do occasionally see Kingfishers on the Reserve, but usually as a flash of electric-blue passing by at 40 mph, accompanied by the shrill, piping whistle of a call that gives away the bird’s presence. It’s much more unusual to see one actually sitting still for a change!

By the end of the working week, the weather had taken a distinct turn, with Storm Eowyn bearing down on us from the south-west. At the time of writing, conditions are still pretty wild along the coast of the Reserve, and in the neighbouring village of Collieston you can say goodbye to anything that’s not securely lashed down.

Right, I’m away to hit the ‘publish’ button on this article before the electricity goes off. See you again next week!

Here at NatureScot, one of our oft-repeated mantras is ‘connecting people with nature’. And not without very good reason. The relationship between humanity and the natural world is faltering, and ultimately, repairing this broken connection will be key to the future of both nature and people on planet earth. No pressure then!

But what exactly is a ‘connection with nature’? I guess there could be any number of definitions here, but for the purposes of this article, I’m going to distil it into its simplest component parts: love, respect and care. In this sense, it’s not so very different to a successful relationship with another person. And like a personal relationship, it’s a two-way thing, involving a good deal of give and take, and sometimes a degree of compromise in order to get along peacefully and happily. This probably sounds a bit trite and unfashionable in the current fast-paced era in which we live, with its prevalence of everyone-for-themselves attitudes, but please bear with me.

Love, of course, can manifest itself in lots of different ways. For some folk, this may be something as basic as immersing themselves in a wild landscape, or a beautiful sunset, or a wildlife spectacle like an evening flight of geese or a murmuration of Starlings. These are simple, aesthetic pleasures which cost nothing, and yet for those of us who love such things, the world would be very much the poorer without them. And there, immediately, is a reason to care for the natural world.

For some of us, this love of nature may run much deeper. I have been interested in the natural world for longer than I can actually remember. I find the entire thing awesome, partly from the perspective of the scientist (how all the pieces fit together and function as a global ecosystem of immense complexity), and partly the romantic (wow, isn’t that plant / butterfly / bird / moth / mushroom beautiful?). These two perspectives are often seen as opposed, but I disagree. The best field scientists that I’ve met are also passionate about their subject on an intrinsic level too. There’s nothing wrong with that!

Take my own passion for birding as an example. It’s October, the wind’s in the east, and as usual Daryl is lurking in the bushes looking for birds (OK, this is maybe a particularly ‘niche’ connection with nature, but never mind). As well as dutifully and scientifically recording the identity and numbers of all the migrant birds that are arriving on our coast, I am also just enjoying the spectacle of it. For me, being caught up in a big arrival of birds is almost a spiritual experience. There’s also this nagging feeling of ‘you’d better enjoy this while you can’, because the ongoing decline in many bird species means such events are getting fewer and further between. But this also makes me more determined to save the natural world, so that others can enjoy the spectacle in years to come. And this will require both hard science and passion.

For other people, a personal connection with nature may take a different course altogether. I have a cousin in a far-flung corner of England who is a wildfowler. That is to say that he shoots ducks and geese. I know some people find the very idea of this horrifying; how could somebody who does this sort of thing actually care about nature? And how could I, as a conservationist, even bring myself to speak to the bloke?

But it’s not as black-and-white as that. This guy cares passionately about the natural world, and not just in the hope that there will always be an evening flight of Teal on his little patch of marshland. The best wildfowlers are those who respect their quarry: they might spend the morning out on the marsh and not even get the chance to fire a shot, but still consider it a morning well spent. It’s about the experience of being out among the wildfowl, and the landscape, and all its other inhabitants. It’s another form of being connected to nature, and another set of reasons for striving to protect it. Many an area of saltmarsh and riverbank, threatened with development and destruction, have been saved by people who shoot or fish. Perhaps we’re not so different after all.

It’s been said that our predilection in the UK for keeping pets – chiefly dogs and cats of course, but countless other creatures besides – is a subconscious substitute for our lost connection with the natural world. That’s as maybe, with the UK being one of the most nature-depleted countries on the entire planet. For some folk, opportunities to connect with nature are woefully scarce, and we desperately need to put this right.

In my household, for reasons of practicality, we don’t keep any pets, but our local wildlife more than fills the same space. For the past two years, we’ve enjoyed the company of a tame Blackbird, who has visited the back door every morning to be fed fruit from the hand. A real character, he has brought a huge amount of joy and entertainment to us and our various house guests, taking fruit from any outstretched hand with a fine lack of discrimination. He even acquired a name, Mr. Plink, with respect to his persistent alarm-call which telegraphed the presence of a cat or a Magpie in the vicinity.

One morning this week, however, we found an ominous scatter of feathers on the garden path, including the unmistakable silky-black retrices (tail-feathers) of an adult male Blackbird. It appeared that a Sparrowhawk had caught up with Mr. Plink: a perfectly normal and natural end for a wild bird, but I must confess that we were quite cut up about it. This was one little bit of nature with which we had a particularly close connection. As somebody once said, you can’t experience love without experiencing pain too. Waaahhhhhhhh! Lesson learned (or rather re-learned): never name a wild creature, as it’ll end in tears!

Anyway, quickly getting our hard-hearted professional biologists’ hats back on, we realised that Mr. Plink’s territory would undoubtedly be taken up by another male Blackbird before too long, and that we would have to work on the newcomer with grapes and strawberries in due course. And this is where the romantic and the hard-hearted biologist again come together: what we want to ensure is that there are always Blackbirds in the world, so that everyone gets to jam in on the love. Not just Blackbirds, of course, but everything from mosses to marine mammals. While keeping pets tends to narrow our focus to the individual, caring for nature necessitates looking after the entire species.

Someone once observed that we can’t love and care about something that we don’t know or relate to. Therein lies the rationale behind NatureScot’s ‘connecting people with nature’ mantra, and this is the driver behind a lot of our communications and visitor-engagement work here at Forvie. If we can help people to connect with nature – whether here on the Reserve, or in the wider world – then we’ve hopefully given those people a reason to love, respect and care for nature too.

Nature now needs as many advocates as it can get. Anything to make my job a little bit easier…

The first working week of 2025 at Forvie is probably best described as having been properly and unequivocally wintry. And well it ought to be: after all, January is supposed to be midwinter in Scotland, right? However, after the recent run of record-breakingly mild years, we’ve perhaps become a bit unaccustomed to snow and cold, and consequently the Arctic conditions we’ve experienced over the past few days have been something of a novelty.

I must admit to quite enjoying a good blast of cold winter weather. Not only does the sharpness in the air remind you that you’re alive, but everything just looks so beautiful too. I’ve long said that I enjoy the snow because it covers up some of mankind’s mistakes, and for a short while the landscape is transformed into something pristine and natural once again. These are great times to be out and about, but a great deal of care is required when traversing the footpaths. At the time of writing, a nine-day cycle of freezing and thawing has resulted in a thick layer of glassy ice on most of the paths and tracks, and a set of ice-grips that fit over the soles of your boots are highly recommended!

For our wildlife, of course, it’s not all about nice views and pleasant walks through the landscape. These are hard times, and survival is the order of the day rather, than appreciating the aesthetics. But the wildlife of the north is tough, and waterfowl such as the hardy Whooper Swans take a fair bit of convincing that it’s time to move on to pastures unfrozen. After a few days, a bit of local movement might take place, with birds frozen off the freshwater lochs inland; these tend to head to the coast, or to rivers and estuaries like our very own Ythan, where the movement of water and the saline influence of the tide will keep the ice at bay.

Like the swans, various species of ducks also tend to switch between fresh and salt water as the freezing-and-thawing cycle dictates. We often notice inflated numbers of dabbling-ducks – namely Mallard, Wigeon and Teal – on the estuary during periods of hard weather, as they are displaced from frozen freshwater bodies. This makes for a great wildlife spectacle, especially at those times when a hunting Peregrine Falcon puts the fear into the flocks.

Among the 494 Teal recorded during this week’s waterfowl census on the estuary, there lurked an interloper all the way from North America. A sharp piece of spotting by Catriona, who was in the process of counting the Teal at the time, produced a rarity in the form of a Green-winged Teal hiding out among his European cousins. See if you can follow in Catriona’s footsteps, and have a wee game of ‘spot the difference’…

Not easy, right enough… OK, shall I give you a bit of a clue then?

Given a decent view, the drake Green-winged Teal is easily separable from his European counterpart by the arrangement of his white stripes. The European Teal has a horizontal white stripe running along the top of each flank, whereas the Green-winged Teal has a vertical white stripe on either side of his chest. The photo below, taken on the estuary three winters previously, illustrates this perfectly: Green-winged on the left, European on the right. It’s even possible that this is the very same bird, back at Forvie for his winter holidays in Europe for the third year running. And as always, I still find it a bit mind-blowing that something from another continent can turn up on my local patch – isn’t nature brilliant?!

The continuing cold snap has also brought some wildlife from the open countryside into the shelter and sanctuary of the gardens in Forvie’s neighbouring villages of Newburgh and Collieston. The rather suave Redwing – essentially a more snappily-dressed Continental version of our resident Song Thrush – is a classic example of a hard-weather immigrant. Usually found foraging in pasture and ploughland, when times are hard they can sometimes be found raking through the leaf-litter under trees and hedges, or burrowing through the snow in the flower-borders looking for some invertebrates to eat.

Redwings are often accompanied on migration by Fieldfares, which also flee the Scandinavian winter and head south-west across the North Sea. Both species are wild and wary, and difficult to approach, though the latter are more apt to accept handouts at garden feeding-stations. Fieldfares are particularly fond of soft fruit such as apples and pears, and by providing such food in your garden, you might just be rewarded by a visit from one or more of these handsome visitors from the north.

So, it’s been a case of snowfall – check; big skies and great sunrises/sunsets – check; fabulous wildife – check… the only other thing required to complete the northern winter’s greatest-hits reel simply has to be a display of aurora borealis. Hold my beer…

Yes, it fairly kicked off last week. And for once it was actually clear enough to see it too, rather than the customary full overcast. This more than made up for all the nights we’ve experienced in recent months – to our immense frustration – when the aurora alert has been honking away, but the sky has remained obscured behind a thick and stubborn blanket of cloud. But now it was payback time!

Not the worst start to the new year then. Turns out the northern winter actually has quite a lot to recommend it, if you can tear yourself away from the fireside for a while. Just don’t forget those ice-grips!

And it’s out with the old, and in with the new! As the last week of the old year saw us reflecting on the highs and lows of 2024 at Forvie, so the first week of the new year finds us looking ahead with the usual combination of excitement, anticipation and no little trepidation. Instead of looking back, the focus now is firmly on what lies ahead in 2025, with the year stretching out before us like a great highway into the unknown. Best fasten your seatbelts, as we’ve got no idea what the ride’s going to be like.

Fact is, we are living in an age of great change and uncertainty. Not just socially, politically and economically, but environmentally-speaking too. Without wishing to start the new year on a downer, the hard truth is that we’re in the midst of the sixth great extinction as we speak. The current rate of loss and destruction of nature – humanity’s biological life-support system, don’t forget – is unprecedented, and to those of us with even a bit of knowledge of the subject, it’s utterly terrifying.

Ongoing biodiversity loss is obvious to anyone who ever goes outdoors. I grew up in the 1990s: not exactly a golden age for biodiversity, but compared to the state of things thirty years later, it was like living in the Garden of Eden. And that’s without having even mentioned the C-word (climate, of course – what did you think I meant?!). Paradoxically, widespread public knowledge of, and concern for, environmental issues have each probably never been greater than they are now. And therein lies a cause (however cautious) for optimism.

So how do we sort this out? Well, first up I suppose is a bit of a call for unity. People all over the world are divided, and not infrequently brought into conflict, over a multitude of political, religious, economic or idealistic differences; this is nothing new of course. But ultimately we’re all inhabitants of the same small planet, and the pressures that we’re now collectively exerting upon that small planet – exacerbated as they are by our own conflicts and their associated waste and destruction – will in due course affect every single one of that small planet’s inhabitants. Silo mentality is of no further use to humanity now: we’re very much all in this together. The first step on the road to redemption is to recognise this!

What’s needed is a global approach. Thing is, ‘global’ is actually made up of ‘local’, multiplied by several billion. It’s tempting to think that we, as individuals, can’t make any difference by ourselves, which tends to lead to nihilism and despair. This can also be used as a convenient and lazy excuse for inaction and apathy. Well wake up and smell the 2025 coffee, kids – you CAN make a difference, and don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise! The contrast between eight billion people pulling in the same direction, and eight billion people saying they can’t be bothered, shouldn’t need pointing out. An old truism used to say ‘charity begins at home’, and I’m inclined to believe the same thing about saving nature and humanity.

Each new year represents an opportunity to reset and reassess how we go about our lives. For many of us, this means setting ourselves some personal goals or resolutions (though I admit that in my case, the ink has often barely dried when I’m consigning most of my resolutions to the kindling basket). These resolutions can be as serious or as frivolous as you see fit, but why not include something that could help the planet as well as yourself? Perhaps something as simple as eating a veggie supper instead of a meaty one on one night of the week, or walking to the shops/school/café instead of taking the car. You might not think it makes any difference, but multiply that by eight billion…

Here on the Reserve, we’re acutely aware that we can only do so much within our thousand hectares. But we’re also aware of how the stuff that we do extends far beyond our own boundaries. The work we do at Forvie in conserving breeding seabirds, for example, directly connects us with Europe, Africa and even the Antarctic. Our responsibility isn’t just to ourselves, or our visitors, or even to Scotland, it’s to the entire planet. There’s no silo mentality going on here.

Another part of our remit that goes far beyond the Reserve boundary is awareness-raising, and having conversations just like this one – whether via the blog and various other media channels, or face-to-face with folk out on site. One of the toughest jobs on the Reserve is getting everyone singing off the same song sheet – visitors and responsible access being the obvious example – but we also have an increasingly important role to play in furthering the cause of nature conservation in the wider world too.

If we can connect with people in a way that helps them to value nature – whether here or anywhere else on the planet – then it’s all grist to the conservation mill. Indeed, those of you who regularly read these pages and share them with your friends are helping us out, and for that you have our enduring gratitude. Nature, and those of us trying to save it, need all the help we can get.

So what of my own New Year’s resolutions then? In no particular order: Drink a bit less beer. Try and get a bit fitter. Learn a few new tunes on the piano. Get out birding a bit more often. And join together with the rest of humanity to try and save the world. Wish me luck!

When you get to this time of year, it’s not uncommon for people to say to ‘so, has it been a good year on the Reserve this year then?’ To which the traditional reply is ‘mate, I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night, let alone what happened 6 months ago…’ But it’s a good prompt to have a wee look back over the year at the joys and tribulations of working on one of Scotland’s foremost National Nature Reserves.

January started wet, with parts of the Reserve under a lot of water. In fact, parts of the Reserve were more flooded than we’d ever seen them. This was compounded by a period of snow mid-month, which, while utterly beautiful, was hard on the wildlife. It certainly led to an invasion of ‘winter thrushes’ – Redwing and Fieldfare – into local gardens, and the disappearance of any remaining fruit from the trees!

By contrast, February started cold and clear, but very quickly warmed up to an unexpected 15 degrees in the first week of the month! The first Snowdrops appeared and both the Skylarks and the Mistle Thrushes acted as early heralds of spring, singing their hearts out on the clear days. February also marks the start of work at the ternery, with dead vegetation being cleared away well in advance of the birds returning. We also started out educational visits and talks in February, hosting visits from RGU and giving talks to local interest groups.

The first week in March is always Tern Fence Week. Officially the start of what we only semi-jokingly refer to as ‘crazy season’ (i.e. April through August), it’s a huge job to put up, and a huge relief when it’s done. As always, many, many thanks to our volunteers who help us lug the fencing gear across the dunes, and provide us with unfailingly good company – we couldn’t do it without you. By the end of the month, the first Black-headed Gulls were investigating the site. We also see our first Lesser Celandines and Bumblebees in March, which certainly makes it feel spring-like. March and April are also times when you have summer and winter birds at the same time – so our first, Sandwich Terns, returning from Africa, overlapped with a party of Whooper Swans, heading to Iceland. But that was by no means the most unusual visitor we had in March – that prize must go to ‘Mr Buffles’, the extremely popular and handsome Bufflehead duck, who spent two days on Sand Loch right at the end of the month.

Although spring should have been in full swing by April, it certainly didn’t feel like it this year! The weather was cold and wet for much of the month and the gulls were a full fortnight later in egg-laying than last year. But the most notable feature of the month were the exceptionally high tides, higher than any of us has ever seen in the past. It really brings the impacts of climate change into sharp focus when you can see sea-level rise in progress. A series of big tides led to the sad loss of the rare Oysterplant from the reserve.

We expect May to be pretty manic in a normal year, what with everything growing and breeding but, for the birders on the Reserve staff, it was outright chaos. The best spring ‘fall’ of migrant birds for many years led to a series of rarities being seen on or around the Reserve, and the roll-call included Whinchat, Redstart, Red-backed Shrike, Bluethroat, Nightjar, Icterine Warbler and Marsh Warbler. On top of all that, we had to census the Black-headed Gulls (down 20% on last year, perhaps due to bird flu). Meanwhile, the Sandwich, Arctic and Common terns all had eggs by this point.

June is seabird census month, with counts of cliff-nesting seabirds and the tern species all carried out this month. All of the cliff-nesting seabird numbers were down, a pattern that is sadly being repeated across the whole country. It’s a tough time to be a seabird, what with climate change altering currents and food supply. Add in over-fishing, pollution and bird ‘flu and you have a perfect storm of conditions making life hard for our seabirds. At least we had the wildflowers and the insects to cheer us up, both of whom are reaching their best in June.

July continued the cold, wet theme that had dominated the year so far, with a number of young terns succumbing to the weather early in the month. But, in spite of the weather, we were really lucky with our events this year and often managed to hold them on the one dry day in the week – this was sheer luck, as they are planned in February! The fun day was exceptionally well-attended, as was the ever-popular moth morning, which provided some crowd-pleasers such as Garden Tigers and Burnished Brass moths. However, the main story of the month was the seabirds’ food supply collapsing, which effectively ended our tern season a fortnight early. It seems that rising North Sea temperatures led to changes in Sand-eel availability, and the birds just couldn’t find food – so they all departed. Sandwich Terns – which breed earlier in the season – actually had a pretty normal year, but Arctic and Common Terns, which breed later, had a really poor season. Sadly so did our Little Terns, but that was largely due to them being useless and taking their young outside the protective fence, where they (bar one) all got eaten. You just can’t legislate for that!

We’re always grateful when  August rolls around. It’s a lot of work getting the tern fence back in (yet again, thanks to our volunteers) but a relief when the bird breeding season draws to a close. It also marked the weather – finally – becoming a little more settled and a few warm days really brought out the butterflies. These were often seen nectaring on the heather across the top of Forvie Moor. But, though it felt like summer had finally arrived, it was clearly becoming more ‘autumny’: the heather filling the air with the smell of honey, Canada Geese on their moult migration honking up and down the river, and waders moving south from high Arctic breeding grounds.

By the time September arrived, we were well into autumn. Birds were constantly moving south through the Reserve and, by mid-month, the first Pink-footed Geese were back. The slightly more settled weather also gave us a last chance to attack some of the less desirable species on or around the Reserve, in the shape of the non-native, invasive Pirri-pirri Bur and Pearly Everlasting. September also marked the opening of the new all-abilities boardwalk at Newburgh, providing visitors with a superb opportunity to view the seal haul-out safely from the south side of the river. We’re grateful to the Newburgh & Ythan Community Trust for all the work they put into this.

October should theoretically be the month that everything starts winding down for the year… shorter days, it’s getting colder and the clocks change. But, for the Reserve staff, not a bit of it! The wildflower meadow, so colourful and full of insects in spring, needed cut and raked off – plus we were helping with similar work at Dinnet. We started our annual ditch-clearing in October as well, and also had some of the biggest wildfowl counts of the year to undertake. One of these produced the most obvious rare bird imaginable, in the shape of a Snow Goose, glaringly white amongst the Pink-feet. But even it got knocked out of the park for rarity value when Danny and Joe nearly ran over an Isabelline Wheatear on the way back to the office – the first record for North-East Scotland in 45 years!

This year, November was notable for an early and quite significant snowfall, with the Reserve turned a pristine white for a few days. Also pristine white were the first seal pups of the year, with four being born this month. Will Forvie become an important pupping site? We hope so but watch this space!

And thus the year rolls round to December. With short days and long nights, there’s very little daylight to get out and about in, and all our bird counts and site work must be carefully timed to fit in with tides and light. When the sun does shine, it’s that pure, clear winter light that makes the ducks glow with colour and brings out all the fine patterning on the waders. With light being short, it’s also the month to get all our equipment serviced and a fair bit of admin done too, reporting on all the things we’ve seen and done over the year… more important than you’d think, because unless we write it down, no-one thinks we’ve done it!

So, now that’s the year just about done, all that remains is to wish our visitors all the best for the upcoming new year – bring on 2025!

Like Bing, we’re dreaming of a White Christmas. Even a nice, cold, clear frosty morning would do, please, weather gods… just not 5 degrees and raining. Please? But, with our maritime climate – and the warming of the world through climate change – I’m afraid 5 degrees and raining, or at least overcast, is far more likely. And the only way we’ll get a white Christmas is to make one for ourselves. So here goes for a celebration of all things, to quote the local Doric, “aa bonny an’ fite” at Christmas, with a rundown of our favourite snow-coloured wildlife!

The commonest white residents of the Reserve are the Mute Swans. There are usually at least a couple of pairs nesting on the Reserve each summer, and they are always popular with visitors (to the extent we have considered changing the answering machine message to say “To enquire about the swans, press 1”). The Sand Loch pair are the easiest to see, and have successfully raised several young on the loch in the past.

Over the winter months, our resident swans are joined by their wild whooping cousins from Iceland. Usually, at some point in October each year, whatever you’re doing gets dropped with a cry of “swans!” as you dash outside to try and catch your first glimpse of these winter visitors. For me, it’s one of the best sounds in the natural world, the whooping of wild swans. I always think they have nicer faces than the Mute Swans too – Mutes just look permanently grumpy, whereas Whoopers have much gentler faces.

A sure sign of climate change has been the expansion of the ranges of certain species. Some of the most obvious of these are the egret species we now see regularly on the estuary. When I was a young birder – not the day nor yesterday – you’d drive out from Aberdeen to see a Little Egret on the Ythan. Now, they are seen here more-or-less all of the time, and we’ve seen up to 8 in one go. What’s more, their larger relative, the Great White Egret, is now annual on the estuary as well. Little Egrets now breed in the south-west of Scotland – wonder how long it will be until they do so here?

Last birdy one now I promise, but this one is surely the best-qualified of all. In the autumn, we were lucky to be visited by a Snow Goose all the way from North America – not only a bonny white-plumaged bird, but it even has ‘snow’ in the name. You can’t say any fairer than that!

A very rarely seen treat is to spot a Stoat in full ‘ermine’ – their white winter coat. With milder winters, Stoats rarely – on the coast, anyway – moult into a full white coat. They may have white patches, but would be glaringly obvious as a white animal in a non-snowy landscape! Their fur was prized for centuries to trim robes and, in many of the pictures you see of monarchs, their white fur collars are the pelt of ermine Stoats.

In the summer, one of the signs of spring is the emergence of the white butterflies. Often known collectively as ‘cabbage whites’ (because their caterpillars love brassicas and did indeed turn our cabbages into something resembling fine lacework this year), these are actually three species – the Green-veined White, the Large White and the Small White.

We have several species of white flowers on the reserve – Sea Campion, Scurvy-grass, various chickweeds and cresses, and an assortment of mayweeds and daisies (if you don’t count the yellow bit in the middle). Sea Campion and Scurvy-grass are probably the most representative of the reserve, being coastal specialists which can survive the salty, often inhospitable climate of our cliff tops.

But we do sometimes find plants that are white that we don’t expect to be! Everyone knows it’s lucky to find some white heather, but other species can show a white ‘throw’ too, and we’ve seen white versions of Wild Thyme, Spear Thistle, Ragged Robin, Lousewort and even Bluebells on the reserve – all of which are usually blue, pink or purple in colour.

Last of all, a mention must go to our Grey Seal pups. It looks like Forvie may be developing into a regular pupping site, with 5 pups born this season so far. They are pure white when born, but, within weeks will have moulted into a waterproof, darker coat and will be fully independent. Folk have been able to get great views of the pups from the the all-abilities boardwalk at Newburgh this year – it’s the best and safest way to watch the seals, from the south of the river.

So, even if we don’t get a white snowy Christmas this year, we can always have a white wildlife one here at Forvie. Here’s wishing all our readers a happy, healthy and relaxed festive period, and we’ll see you all again next year!