….sometimes it’s dead animals. It’s an old cliché, but death is part of life and, when you work in the natural world, you see your fair share of dead animals. Often it’s the remains of something that’s been eaten by something else, but last year we had over two-and-a-half thousand dead birds as a result of bird flu. And, when there’s a wee bit of east in the wind, anything dead in the sea winds up on the beach. That happened this week, when (we think) a dead minke whale washed up in South Broadhaven. It’s always sad to see such a beautiful animal dead and there isn’t any obvious sign of injury, so we can’t say why it died. We’ve reported it to Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS) but it may not be fresh enough for them to sample or autopsy. We’ll just be leaving it where it is, as it’s really important that the body is allowed to decompose naturally and the nutrients from it to return to the marine environment.

One of the delights of this job is how quickly you can go from a large, smelly dead whale to a rare bird! A liaison meeting with the RSPB was rudely interrupted by a cry of ‘CRANE’ from one of our colleagues…and, sure enough, there was a pair of cranes, flying overhead and looking gloriously prehistoric. Cranes have only recently started to recolonise the North-East of Scotland after going extinct here around 400 years ago. They are always a treat to see and hopefully will become more common here in future years. Keep your eyes on the skies as there may be more heading south on migration.

If you have looked at the skies around the estuary this week, you may not have spotted the cranes, but you will almost certainly have seen geese on the move. There have been around 9000 roosting on the estuary and moving off into the nearby stubble fields to feed.

For the local birders, it’s one of the pleasures in life to sort through these goose flocks, to see if you can find a rare goose. But, if it’s a snow goose, you don’t have to look too hard to pick it out in a flock – you were instantly wondering what the white dot was from the road!

Up close, a white snow goose is a handsome bird. Snow-white (as the name suggests), with black wing tips and a pink beak, this is a vagrant from North America. It may be seriously lost, but it’s a real pleasure to see.

As we mentioned earlier, there’s been just a hint of east in the wind on and off over the past couple of weeks. As well as the dead whale, it’s brought us some visitors from the continent. A high-pitched ‘zee-zee-zee’ in the bushes heralded the arrival of the tiny, jewel-like goldcrests, all 5 grams of them. These birds seem miraculous – how can something so tiny (about the weight of a 20p coin) manage to cross the North Sea? But thousands do, every year, and it blows my mind every time I see one.

Sometimes, something small and green in the bushes is an awful lot rarer – and further travelled – than a goldcrest. Easterly winds also bring to our shores yellow-browed warblers from Siberia. Yes, Siberia. In places, their breeding range overlaps that of giant panda, yet these gorgeous wee birds turn up here in small numbers almost every year. If you think a goldcrest crossing the North Sea is mind-blowing, try and get your head around that!

Last weekend, we were lucky enough to host a Fungi Foray, with top mycologist Liz Holden. Fungi – or mushrooms, or toadstools – are still pretty poorly understood, and they are certainly under-recorded… if only because they are so difficult to tell apart. And that’s where Liz came in – a fungi expert with many years’ experience, she could explain what to look for when trying to identify these often similar-looking mushrooms.

It’s well known that marram grass helps bind sand dunes together, but the mycelium (root-like structure) of fungi also helps bind and stabilise the sand. Fungi also help may plants to grow through a ‘mycorrhizal’ relationship with the plant roots, whereby the plants and fungi exchange water and nutrients. Here, at Forvie, we have a lot of grasslands and we see several species of what are known as ‘waxcap’ fungi. These are often brightly coloured and it’s thought Scotland is internationally important for these.

We also have a selection of woodland fungi here, courtesy of their relationship with the creeping willow. It may only be a few inches high, but it’s still a woodland as far as the fungi are concerned…and they have a symbiotic relationship with the tree roots.

Fungi popping up may be one sign of autumn, but so are cool, damp, dewy mornings. It’s noticeable that the ground is wet every morning and, if it’s still overnight, a heavy dew winds up coating all the spiders’ webs and and grass.

It’s also the time of year when sunset happens just after supper. So it’s a great time to get out and enjoy them. The reserve can offer some big skies to appreciate these… so get out there and enjoy these before they get even earlier!

This week saw the Forvie full-time staffers return from their ‘summer’ holidays after two weeks away. Amid the mayhem of the summer season on the Reserve, it can be difficult to find the time or head-space to take a week off (never mind two weeks), and therefore we usually leave it until September, by which time the chaos has abated somewhat. It was a relief upon our return to find that no disasters had occurred in our absence (and even more importantly, we hadn’t missed too many rare birds either – going away during migration season is a fraught and dangerous business). We were indebted to Danny and Joe for holding the fort in the meantime, and for keeping the bloggage carousel turning as well. Thanks gents!

Now I’m not saying that we’re grumpy and unsociable (much), but after a long summer of working face-to-face with the public without a break, we’re usually looking for a quiet time on our September holidays. This year, therefore, we ended up right in the middle of Ireland, in County Westmeath, way off the tourist trail. Way off the tourist trail. If we’d been given a Euro every time someone asked us “But whatever made you choose to come here?!”, we’d have paid off our bar tab at our adopted local (well, almost).

Anyway, there’s a reason for blethering on about our holidays here. For conservation folk like ourselves, work and pleasure often tend to get mixed up a bit. This is chiefly because ours is a vocation rather than a career in the normal sense, and most of us I think are genuinely and deeply interested in the stuff that we happen to do for a living. The fortnight in Ireland was a case in point, as we spent a good deal of it wandering around various lowland bogs, woodlands and nature reserves. A bit of a busman’s holiday I suppose, but it turned out to be both enjoyable and enlightening.

On one particular day-trip, to Clara Bog in County Offaly, we met with two pieces of good fortune. The first was bumping into a local naturalist, who very kindly pointed out to us some of the more unusual and interesting species of plants and invertebrates. Bog Rosemary, Wild Cranberry, various Sphagnum mosses, sundews and leaf-miners were among the fare on offer – for the most part, species we are unlikely ever to see on our home patch. We thanked her profusely when we parted company; when it comes to visiting unfamiliar places, local knowledge is key.

Secondly, our visit happened to coincide with a site visit by staff from Ireland’s National Parks and Wildlife Service – essentially our counterparts in Ireland. We introduced ourselves as NatureScot staff and had a long and enjoyable blether, and quickly learned that we had a great deal in common. Some of the NPWS staff even knew some of our NatureScot colleagues, including our CEO Francesca, and had visited some of our own NNRs. Perhaps most pertinently, we discovered that our Irish counterparts are faced with exactly the same issues and problems that we face here in Scotland.

Using Clara Bog as a handy example, the NPWS folk apologised to us for the dog-fouling on what was otherwise a lovely and well-maintained boardwalk. We replied that things are much the same at home, regardless of the provision of bins and polite reminders on the notice boards! The exact same situation exists with sensitive wildlife and ground-nesting birds, too. Clara is one of the last remaining breeding sites of the Curlew in Ireland, with the species just barely hanging on on the country. Yet the NPWS staff told us that the rate of compliance with the ‘dogs on leads’ request on the nature reserve was dispiritingly low, and posed a direct threat to the continued survival of Curlew as a breeder on this site. This all sounded heartbreakingly familiar.

Other issues were also common to us all. Climate change was a particularly hot topic (sorry), not least because bogs have a critical role to play in capturing and locking up carbon; in fact this is especially topical as we have just come to the end of Climate Week 2024. In the past, large-scale extraction of peat took place for energy generation in Ireland, most notably in the mid- to late 20th Century. This made economic sense at the time, in terms of using what was a cheap and locally-abundant source of energy, but at substantial environmental and climate costs. Not just in the actual combustion of the peat, but in the draining of the bogs in which the peat was formed. While a healthy bog captures huge amounts of carbon dioxide, a damaged bog actually emits greenhouse gases, thereby exacerbating the problem.

Thankfully people all over the world have begun to recognise the importance of peatlands, not least in Ireland and at home here in Scotland. Efforts are now being made in both countries to preserve and restore bogs, a critical step in the fight against climate change. But it’s not just about carbon capture; there’s also a recognition that these are hugely important places in terms of their intrinsic qualities, their natural and human history. Just recently, the Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland received the accolade of World Heritage Site; it wasn’t so long ago that the same area was considered an economically useless wasteland, and was subject to drainage and plantation with non-native conifers. How times have changed – and in this case, very much for the better.

Meanwhile, energy generation is increasingly centred upon renewables, rather than burning carbon-rich fuels such as peat. In Ireland we saw evidence of a growing wind energy industry, in much the same way as we’ve seen in Scotland over the past two decades. This isn’t without its own problems, not least in the siting of turbines, but is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. While small-scale cutting of peat (turf) for the cottage fire is likely to continue – much as some of us here still cut our own firewood – the industrial exploitation of peat as fuel appears to be on the wane.

Of all the things we found out during our impromptu conservationists’ foreign exchange, the most important (to my mind at least) was a strong sense that we’re all in this together. Among the NPWS staff there was an obvious passion for nature, and a fierce pride in the sites in their care; both of these things mirrored our own outlook. Yes, we may have had a moan to one another about irresponsible dog owners, and people failing to treat nature reserves with the respect they need and deserve, and the shared anxieties of climate change, losses, extinctions – all the old favourites. But for all that, I must admit to being uplifted by meeting other folk like us, who are also swimming against the tide and trying to make things better for nature and humanity.

As I said earlier in the piece, ours is a vocation rather than a career. And while we wouldn’t choose to be doing anything else, at times it can be a surprisingly lonely existence, working against long odds, often in the face of ignorance, indifference and wanton destruction. That’s not a cry for sympathy, by the way, just a statement of the facts. So it’s a great comfort to know that throughout the world, other people stand shoulder to shoulder with us in the battle to save nature. Thank you, Ireland – Slainte!

Hi folks! Those of you with good memories might remember that I referred to Short-eared Owls in one of my previous posts, roughly this time last year. I was really hoping that the following autumn and winter would bring about an ‘irruption’ (rush in) of birds from the continent, and lo and behold, it did, big time! Before I go any further, when speaking of birds, an irruption refers to the movement of northern-wintering species to the south in years of low food availability. So, species such as Short-eared Owl, Rough-legged Buzzard and Waxwing are all such irruptive birds. They don’t always overwinter in the UK, but when they do, their numbers can become very significant, when the food supply in their normal wintering grounds is lower than usual.  

Some of you might recall various stunning photographs in the local newspapers of Short-eared Owls or ‘Shorties’ hunting for voles over the Kings Links Golf Course in Aberdeen, caught against a backdrop of skyscraper cityscapes, last autumn and winter. November 2023 saw large influxes of these owls from Scandinavia along the UK’s east coast. Short-eared Owls are quite nomadic birds and rather than staying faithful to specific wintering and breeding sites year on year (like osprey for instance), they are instead completely dictated by vole population cycles (akin to the relationship between the Canadian Lynx and Snowshoe Hare), and this is why they can seemingly occur quite randomly in different locations one year to the next. They are what we call sporadic breeders. So, despite the relatively industrial and populated King’s Links area not being a particularly favourable breeding habitat, because it was autumn and they had already bred and needed food; the owls were quite content to roost and hunt there for several weeks, until that food supply of voles had become exhausted.  

So, you may ask, what happened to all those owls after the winter had passed? It’s likely that some of them flew back to the continent to breed in Scandinavia, the low countries and wherever else they had travelled from. We know that years which yield high wintering populations, often lead to sporadic breeding attempts close by to the areas in which they overwinter. Before I get onto the exciting part, this is probably a good point in the blog to talk a little bit more about the biology of these fascinating and unusual owls. 

Short-eared Owls are medium sized owls with a wingspan of 90-105cm and a body length of up to 42cm. They only weigh up to 350g which probably seems surprisingly lightweight for their overall body size, but this is quite typical for owls (Barn Owls are very similar in that regard). They have mottled brown bodies and quite distinctive pale under-wings and beautifully striking yellow eyes – the bird’s trademark. One of the most unusual characteristics of this species is its habit of hunting in broad daylight, which makes the Short-eared Owl a diurnal hunter. Although, they can also be seen hunting just as comfortably in the dark. These birds are of European conservation concern and are an Amber List species, so any breeding record, especially in the UK, is of upmost significance.  

As I explained before, these birds are sporadic breeders and undergo irruption years where many more individuals overwinter in the UK compared to previous breeding seasons. Therefore, their subsequent UK breeding population can vary from as few as 620 pairs to as many as 2180 pairs. Summers which have yielded 2000 or more pairs, have probably been preceded by a ‘bumper winter’, where many birds overwintered from the continent, and then a sizeable percentage of those birds over-summered and bred. They reach sexual maturity after only one year and appear to be relatively short-lived in comparison to other birds of prey, with the longest-lived ringed individual only being around 7 years old. So, this might result in significantly large differences in their population status year to year, whereas populations of longer-lived birds (i.e. species living 15 years or more) can afford to take bigger hits, as long as they have a few decent runs of successful breeding in a lifetime. 

So now to the exciting part. We first suspected potential breeding on Forvie NNR as early as May, when on multiple occasions, either when walking along the estuary track, back and forth to the Ternary or after completing the seabird nest census; we saw two distinctly different looking adult birds scanning the heath and sand dunes for prey. One had a rather tawny appearance, which Daryl suspected to be an adult female bird and the other was very sandy blonde in plumage, which he thought could have been an adult male. These owls are not sexually dimorphic (meaning noticeably different physical appearance, size and colouring) like most duck, gamebird and some raptor species. But there are subtle physical nuances which the trained eye can decipher, such as the colour difference that Daryl noticed. As the summer progressed, we continued to spot these two individual adults hunting across our vast heath and dune systems and really hoped that these birds were not only over-summering, but also breeding as a pair.  

However, three weeks passed, where we saw very little activity at all, and we started to think that maybe these birds were just staycationing over here after all, before hopping back over the North Sea. Then, just over a week ago, while doing a seal count recce with Claire Stainfield, a PhD student we are working closely with from SRUC, we accidently flushed a family of three Short-eared Owls. We’d walked well beyond the beaten track and the birds had been happily roosting in a small hollow in the dune heath, which was part of the route to Claire’s counting position. We saw what appeared to be the same two adults, ‘Tawny’ and ‘Blondie’, who looked rather bedraggled after a summer of feeding young and an extremely fresh-looking, plumage-perfect youngster. Claire had never seen a Shorty before, so she got three birds of a feather, for the price of one and I was overjoyed to see a family of birds roosting together. We don’t know if there were originally more chicks which had perished or if the others were roosting nearby. It’s possible that this is a younger, less experienced, first-time pair of birds, which might explain why there was only one fully fledged chick roosting with them. But nonetheless this is extremely exciting news for the reserve after a breeding season of mixed fortunes and concerns and we hope this small family continues to thrive and go from strength to strength. 

And so another topsy-turvy week comes to an end. Over the course of the past few days at Forvie, we seem to have had a taste of all four seasons, one after the other. Indeed, the simple act of getting dressed for the day’s work ahead has been a bit of a lottery. From working in shirtsleeves on Wednesday, for instance, we switched to full-on winter togs and waterproofs on Thursday for a bitterly-cold first wader count of the season on the estuary. Then it was back to sunblock and shades on Friday, which turned into a proper scorcher, and felt more like summer than the actual summer did.

That’s September on the east coast, right enough: you never quite know what to expect.

In the event, the easterly blow that the weather forecasters had been bigging-up during the previous week didn’t actually amount to much. Consequently, neither did the spectacular arrival of migrant birds from the Continent that I had been bigging-up in last week’s blog – sigh. You’d think after 20-odd years of making duff predictions that I’d have given up on this stuff by now. But as we recently observed, conservation folk are nothing if not optimistic – it’s a necessity for the sake of our own sanity.

Anyway, the brief onshore blow from Sunday into Monday did deliver a handful of Willow Warblers and a couple of Pied Flycatchers to the Reserve, so it wasn’t a total washout. But next time will be the biggie, I’m sure…

The substantial amounts of rain that we’ve been periodically receiving have kept the wetlands topped up nicely. On Wednesday I took the monthly water-level readings from the dipwells in the dune slacks, and found all of them registering much higher than we would normally expect for early autumn. The No.4 dipwell, in a dune slack behind the beach south of Rockend, remained completely submerged; this isn’t especially unusual in winter, but it’s unprecedented in the summer months.

Meanwhile the Flooded Piece, up by the Reserve office, also remained bank-full. Often in September this is a lunar landscape of cracked, dry mud, with perhaps the odd remaining puddle in which the passage waders can pick around for invertebrates. But this year, for the first time any of us can remember, it’s held deep water right through the summer.

Elsewhere on the heath, what are usually just winter pools have retained water throughout the summer as well. Some of these have rapidly developed into lovely ponds, such as this one between the Heath Trail and Sand Loch.

All this shiny new habitat hasn’t gone unnoticed by Forvie’s wetland inhabitants. Being by their nature supremely mobile, flying insects are among the first creatures to take up residence in these new pools, cashing-in on the opportunities they provide for feeding and breeding. One such insect is the large and imposing Common Hawker dragonfly, a mighty beast whose rattling wing-noise is as likely to attract attention as its dashing flight.

Dragonflies have exceptional eyesight and extraordinarily quick reactions, and as such they are often difficult to approach for a really good view. With this in mind, I considered myself extremely lucky to have sneaked up on the one in the photo above, and snapped a few images with my phone camera. However, things got even better when I later spotted a mating pair, and was able to capture the image below. Common Hawkers aren’t actually that common here at Forvie, and it’s unusual to get a decent look at one, let alone a coupled pair. What a piece of good fortune – this made up for the slight disappointment at the lack of birds earlier in the week!

Butterflies are still very much in evidence despite the shortening days, and I make no apology for yet another photo of a Red Admiral. This is still the most prominent butterfly species in our area at the moment, and a freshly-minted one is a real thing of beauty. How often do you get to see one so well as to show the little patches of sky-blue at the wingtips? Simply exquisite.

We’ve continued moth-trapping as time and weather have allowed (which admittedly is seldom), and the catch has taken on a distinctly autumnal feel. Although numbers and variety of species are still very good, late-summer-into-autumn moth trap catches tend to be a rhapsody in brown, with fewer of the brightly-coloured species that we see earlier in the year. That said, many of them are still fabulous to look at.

The confused-seasons theme was neatly summed up when I was passing the old fishing-station at Rockend on Wednesday. Growing among the grasses a short distance from the ruins of the old bothy was what appeared to be a patch of crocuses. This caused me to do a bit of a double-take: had I done a Rip Van Winkle and gone to sleep for six months, waking up in early spring?

A closer look, and a bit of research, revealed that these weren’t true crocuses, but the flowers of Meadow Saffron. This is a native plant in the British Isles, and a glance at the NESBREC database reveals a scatter of records throughout North-east Scotland. Contrary to its culinary-sounding name, this species is actually quite poisonous, so it’s not something you’d want to be cooking with! Whether this plant found its own way to Forvie, or was introduced as an ornamental species by the former occupants of the fishing-station (as was the case with the various daffodils that reappear each spring in this spot), we’ll likely never know for sure. Either way, it made for an attractive and incongruous sight in the otherwise autumnal landscape.

Of all wildlife, pigeons are among those species least concerned about the seasons of the year. Pigeons are unique in that the adult birds produce a milky fluid in their crops, with which they feed their chicks. This frees them from reliance upon the seasonal availability of insects, fruit or seeds with which to feed their young, and consequently they can breed all year round. They’re also quite catholic in their tastes when it comes to nesting sites – but even so, it was quite a surprise to discover a Woodpigeon’s nest in the little Elder tree next to the wood store at the Reserve office.

Unlike pigeons, however, amphibians are very much bound up with the turning of the seasons. Now is the time that many frogs, toads and newts leave their natal or breeding ponds and seek out a winter residence. In doing so they can end up in some strange places – not least the Common Toad that I discovered in our bathroom one night last autumn, when my bare foot landed on something soft in the dark (luckily the toad was unharmed, though the incident woke me up more than I needed). This week, thankfully, all we had to contend with was this Palmate Newt attempting to gain entry into the Forvie Centre.

Amphibians entering buildings? I guess that means it is actually autumn after all – though for periods this week, it’s been hard to tell.

Today, being the first of September, marks the beginning of the meteorological autumn. More pointedly, it also marks the end of the meteorological summer, and I’m sorry to say that none of us here on the Forvie team will be sad to see the back of it. Characterised by rain, gales, unseasonably cold spells, more rain, more gales, and a very difficult and ultimately disappointing seabird season, the summer of 2024 is one that won’t be remembered especially fondly. Thanks for trying, summer; just remember to shut the door when you leave.

But with every door that closes, so another one opens. September brings with it a chance to salvage something from the ashes of a dismal summer. Should the jet stream actually stop bombarding us with Atlantic depressions for a moment, this can be a wonderful month to be out and about on the Reserve. The weather-charts at the time of writing look quite promising in this respect; just be sure and keep your fingers crossed!

Autumn is nature’s season of plenty. The hard work of spring and summer is over and done for the year: displaying, mating, breeding, raising young, flowering, setting seed, making fruit. Now is the time for cashing-in. For much of our wildlife, life in September is about as easy as it gets. There is a laid-back ease to proceedings, and the Reserve and wider countryside is possessed of a distinct ‘feel’ that is hard to describe but instantly recognisable. It’s a combination of the cool fresh dawns and warm days, the drone of insects, the smell of fallen leaves and the voices of migrating birds filling the air. Oh to be able to capture that atmosphere in a jar, and enjoy it throughout the year!

Bird migration in the past few weeks has been largely dominated by wading-birds returning to the estuary from their upland breeding grounds. Migrant passerines – that is to say small songbirds – have so far been very thin on the ground, not least due to the relentless south-westerly airflow which hinders immigration from the Continent. The exception to this rule have been Wheatears, trickling through in small numbers on some days, though these are likely to be Scottish-bred birds rather than foreign ones. If, as the weather-charts are currently suggesting, we receive an easterly airflow next week, then things might get rather more lively on the migration front. Watch this space…

The past week’s work, though, has been for the most part concerned with plants rather than birds. Firstly, with the best of the wildflower season now behind us, we collected in all the wildflower interpretation boxes from around the Heath Trail. These are a popular fixture during the summer months, but now most of the flowers in question are winding down for the year, so the corresponding boxes are recovered for maintenance and storage. It’s all part of the yearly cycle of life and work at Forvie, and as such both flowers and boxes will be back again next year.

While on one hand we make great efforts to extol the virtues of our beautiful native wildflowers, on the other hand we spend a lot of time engaged in the destruction of non-native invasive species. Having already tackled Himalayan Balsam on the Foveran Burn in the past few weeks, we redoubled our efforts at Foveran Links to tackle the pernicious Pirri-pirri Bur. This ongoing battle usually commences in May each year, continuing through until early autumn, as the herbicide we use in its treatment is only effective when the plant is actively growing. The herbicide is applied by way of a knapsack sprayer, and this can’t be done in wet or windy conditions – thus ruling out much of the summer of 2024. If we do end up getting a fine and settled autumn, it’ll be a case of trying to make up for this lost time.

Completing this year’s unholy trinity of non-native plants was a species that we tackled for the first time last year. Pearly Everlasting is a garden escape that has recently naturalised in the dunes of South Forvie, chiefly along the southernmost quarter of the Dune Trail where the barrier fence stands in summer. At this stage, we don’t know how much potential this species has to be a serious problem a la Balsam or Bur, but neither are we willing to take any chances. Often, by the time an invasive species has been recognised as a serious threat, it’s too late to have a real chance of eradicating it. Consequently in this instance it’s a case of ‘shoot first, ask questions later’.

As per last year, we bumped into a lovely Small Copper butterfly feeding on the flowers of the Pearly Everlasting, and found ourselves apologising for tearing up its favourite nectar-station. Thankfully, of course, there are plenty of native wildflowers in the same area of the Reserve to sustain the butterflies, so it’s unlikely our intervention will have any effect upon the Small Copper population. These tiny, gem-like butterflies have been very scarce here this year, likely due to the dismal weather during spring and summer, so this one was especially pleasing to see.

The end of the week saw a notable event, with a new all-abilities boardwalk opening at Newburgh. Starting from the Newburgh Beach car-park, the boardwalk leads southwards into the dunes, and terminates at two viewpoints – one at high level, one lower down – affording panoramic views over the Ythan Estuary mouth and the Grey Seal haul-out. This impressive piece of work has been led by Newburgh-on-Ythan Community Trust, and part-funded by NatureScot, with the aim of improving access and viewing opportunities for people of all ages and abilities.

Although the boardwalk isn’t actually located on the Reserve, it still has a crucial role to play in helping to safeguard Forvie’s wildlife. As it offers a safe and easily-accessible viewpoint overlooking the seal haul-out, it acts as a natural focal point for people wishing to see the seals. The hope is that this will reduce the incidence of people accessing the seal haul-out from the Forvie side of the river, and in the process causing high levels of disturbance. As ever, the way to see the Forvie seals is to view from the Newburgh side of the river, and the new boardwalk now provides the infrastructure to back this message up.

And so the autumn of 2024 kicks off with a certain sense of optimism. Especially if the weather charts are to be believed – now bring on that easterly…

Another stop-start week of late summer has now passed us by, and I’m worried that I’m beginning to sound like a broken record in that respect. But once again it’s been unsettled and hard to predict (and at times downright unpleasant). Some days have looked and felt properly autumnal, but on the odd occasion that the sun had emerged, it’s felt like a different world out there.

On the occasions when the sun has indeed graced us with its presence, butterflies have been prominent, if never really abundant. Most notable have been the ‘Vanessids’, namely the brightly-coloured and strong-flying trio of Red Admiral, Peacock and Small Tortoiseshell. These can be found anywhere there are nectar-rich flowers available, from the path-sides of the Reserve’s trails to the gardens of our neighbouring villages, bringing a welcome splash of colour to the latter days of August.

The Small Tortoiseshell in the photo above was favouring the flowers of Field Scabious, which grows in the long-grass meadow areas around the Forvie Centre. It can be seen in flower at the same time as its slightly smaller close relative, Devil’s-bit Scabious, which is locally common along the footpaths throughout the Reserve. Whereas the Field Scabious is tall with purple-mauve flowers, the Devil’s-bit is shorter, smaller-flowered and sky-blue rather than purple – though both are equally popular with pollinating insects.

Other species of butterfly are at a different phase of their life-cycle just now. In the gardens of Collieston on the edge of the Reserve, vegetable-growers are very familiar with the caterpillars of the various white butterfly species. While Green-veined White is the predominant species on the Reserve, these are replaced in the village gardens by Small and Large Whites, and on occasion all three species may be seen side by side. Here at home, we’re doing our bit for biodiversity by sharing our cauliflowers and broccoli with these handsome Large White caterpillars.

An altogether more impressive caterpillar was encountered on the footpath between the Forvie Centre and Collieston this week. Its large size, tail-spike and false eyes immediately identified this magnificent beast as the larva of the Elephant Hawk-moth. This was a pleasing find, as neither of our regular moth-traps (at the Forvie Centre and your author’s home in Collieston) have produced any adult moths this year, leading us to wonder how the species was faring locally. Evidently they’re still on the go though!

Down on the estuary, the lazy days of summer are rapidly being superseded by the bustle of autumn, with migrant waterbirds to the fore. Largest in number are the post-breeding waders, notably Redshanks and Lapwings, and these remind us that within a couple of weeks we’ll have recommenced the fortnightly waterfowl counts that will continue right through until next spring. The first couple of counts of the new season tend to produce the highest numbers of waders, as birds pass through our region heading southwards following the end of the breeding season.

Along with the migrant waders, Canada Geese are a prominent presence on the estuary just now. Introduced into the British Isles by people from the 17th Century onwards, they have long since established a feral breeding population, and are a familiar sight and sound at waterbodies throughout the UK, from reservoirs to city parks.

Although these geese are strongly migratory in their native range in North America, the introduced stock here in the UK tend to be relatively sedentary. Curiously, however, they have set up their own annual moult-migration, whereby Canada Geese from all over the country head north to the Beauly Firth in late summer to moult their flight-feathers. When the moult is complete, and the birds are able to fly again, they return southwards and disperse to their usual haunts. It’s during this moult-migration that we see Canada Geese here at Forvie; the rest of the year they are surprisingly scarce here, and in autumn and winter we’re almost as likely to see a genuine vagrant Canada Goose from North America as a feral bird from the UK population.

Big, brash and noisy, Canada Geese aren’t everybody’s favourite – but they are very good at raising the alarm when there’s a predator on the go. This happened on Tuesday, with a sudden disturbance occurring among the geese roosting on the estuary shore at the Snub. Unsettled was certainly the right word for this particular scene.

The honking, flapping and scattering geese soon telegraphed the presence of an Otter bounding along the shore. Although Otters are omnipresent on the estuary, they tend to operate under cover of darkness, so to see one out in full daylight here is something of a collector’s item. And thankfully on this occasion, Catriona had the camera to hand to capture a few snaps of the elusive beast.

With the bird breeding season and its associated mayhem having now ended, there comes a corresponding reduction in the daily workload for Reserve staff and volunteers. This allows us to catch up on the myriad miscellaneous tasks that for the last six months have been shelved and sidelined. One such task this week was the reinstatement of a gate at the little-used Cotehill entrance to the Reserve. We were delighted to have the full attention of an extremely keen audience for this particular job, viz. the photo below – though they didn’t offer much in the way of advice or constructive criticism.

You’ll note from the next photo that by the time the job was completed, our spectators had lost interest and headed off again, presumably resigned to the fact that our pickup truck wasn’t full of tasty treats or mineral licks for them. Honestly, some folk have no attention span these days.

That’s one odd job ticked off the list then – just another umpteen to go as we head onwards into the autumn. No rest for the wicked!

It’s been a strangely disjointed week here at Forvie, with dazzling hot summer days alternating with dismally wet and windy ones. I suppose it’s been a fair reflection of the fickle summer we’ve experienced this year, whereby you’re never quite sure whether to look out the waterproofs and winter togs, or slap on the sunblock. The joys of the great Scottish summer!

I’m sorry to say, readers, that the Reserve really does have its autumn gown on now. The grasses on the heath have turned from green to golden, and alongside the purples of the heathers and the tawnies of the senescing Crowberry and Creeping Willow, this lends the landscape a distinctly autumnal colour palette. Best appreciated on one of the intermittent fine days, this mirrors the ‘harvest landscape’ of the wider countryside at this most beautiful time of the year.

The curious and sharp-eyed visitor may notice the distinctive cactus-like structures of Stag’s-horn Club-moss at certain points on the heath. This can be found most commonly in North Forvie along the convolutions of the Heath Trail, where it adds to the variety of colours and textures which form the rich tapestry of the heath. It’s worth remembering that Forvie’s coastal heathland is an excruciatingly rare habitat in a European context – a landscape you don’t encounter every day – and August is arguably the best time to appreciate it.

Turning our eyes seawards, we’re reminded of the troubling end to the seabird season, with the lack of food causing a corresponding dearth of birds at sea. We’ve seen a few parties of Sandwich Terns passing by – likely English breeders on their autumn travels, heading northwards before returning south via the Irish Sea and onwards to Africa – but none of the large flocks or feeding-frenzies that we typically see in late summer here. The empty seascape makes for a sorry and sombre sight indeed.

That’s not to say there’s no life at all out there. Gannets, themselves recovering at a population level from the devastating effects of avian ‘flu, continue to pass by in small numbers, usually far out to sea but occasionally close enough to afford a really good view.

August is also a great time to spot pelagic seabirds from our coast – by this I mean long-distance travellers rather than local breeders. Perhaps the most remarkable of these is the Sooty Shearwater, a species sighted regularly from our coast during late summer. These birds breed literally at the other end of the world – New Zealand being a particular stronghold for them – and routinely wander northwards to our latitude during the southern hemisphere’s winter. Thus they are able to enjoy two summers per year; I can only hope for their sakes that the austral summer is a bit more enjoyable than our boreal one!

In any case, the thought of seeing a species at Forvie that has flown here from New Zealand is a little mind-blowing to say the least.

Sticking with the bird theme for a moment, we’ve recently logged sightings of two different Marsh Harriers at Forvie: firstly a remarkably scruffy and tired-looking individual, and secondly a mint-condition juvenile in fresh plumage. You’d hardly know they were the same species. But it’s worth double-checking any ‘odd-looking Buzzard’ that you see in our area at the moment, in case it turns out to be one or other of these.

Moving onto insects, late summer into autumn is the best season for dragonflies and damselflies at Forvie. A walk down the track from the Reserve office to Cotehill Loch produced numerous sightings of Common Darters, most of which were basking on the bare sand of the track. As the only red dragonfly that occurs at Forvie, the male Common Darter is nice and easy to identify. The females, however, are a yellowish colour, and as such can be confused with the female Black Darter, a closely-related species that also occurs here.

Some of Forvie’s butterflies are now beginning to show their age, with the remaining Dark Green Fritillaries in particular looking faded, wan and careworn. The lifespan of an adult butterfly is short, and consequently they need to get on with the essentials of life without wasting any precious time – especially in a capricious summer such as this one. This pair of Small Heaths, photographed near the Forvie Centre, were doing just that.

Meanwhile, this Northern Eggar moth caterpillar was motoring its way across one of the trails, probably looking for a safe place in which to pupate and see out the cold months ahead, before emerging as an adult next year. Longer and thicker than your index finger, and prodigiously fuzzy, these are magnificent beasts, and one of the biggest caterpillars you’re likely to encounter here.

In certain places around the Reserve, you may encounter a series of little holes drilled into the bare ground at the edge of the footpaths. These earthworks sometimes look like a miniature Rabbit warren, or a scaled-down Sand Martin colony, but in truth they’re the handiwork of neither mammal nor bird.

These are the nest-holes of the Field Digger Wasp, a species of solitary wasp which excavates burrows in which it lays its eggs. Each burrow is provisioned with prey, upon which the wasp larva feeds when it hatches from the egg within. Flies are the favoured prey of the Field Digger Wasp, and if you watch the nest-holes for long enough, you may be sufficiently lucky to see one of the wasps returning with its catch. This is predator-prey drama of the first degree, but since the perpetrators are so small, most folk don’t ever notice them – apart from perhaps wondering about those curious little holes in the ground.

Lastly, we were surprised to get a glimpse of the aurora on one of the week’s clear nights. By this time of the year, darkness is a bit of a novelty in itself, given the extreme hours of daylight we receive during high summer. And although we’re occasionally lucky enough to see an aurora display during autumn and winter, it certainly wasn’t on our radar for August.

This one wasn’t by any means an all-time classic light show, but it did serve as a reminder that there is much to look forward to, and hope for, in the latter half of the year. Who knows what the forthcoming autumn at Forvie might bring – but the unpredictability is all part of the fun. We’ll just take it all in, one day at a time.

It’s been another full-on week on the reserve. We get a lot of those over the summer, but this year seems to have delivered more that its fair share. It started at the the weekend, with Danny and Joe having a NNR stall at the local Collieston gala, where we spoke to loads of people about the terns, seals and seabirds. We even found time for a poke of chips, so it’s a win-win all round!

Monday saw our version of the Forvie Olympics take place, with such events as endurance post carrying and long-distance wire winding. We even had volunteers turn out to help with these endurance events – thanks Elaine and Richard!

And the upshot of all this work is that the barrier fence is now in for the year and the southern part of the reserve is now open again. However, this doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a good idea to go there, for the sake of the wildlife – and we unfortunately witnessed several instances of disturbance to the seals the day after the fence came in. The words of Aldo Leopold about his fellow man never seemed truer: ‘to enjoy, he must possess, invade, appropriate’. We humans are, in spite of the fact that we are often taught ‘look, but don’t touch’ as children, too prone to ‘touching’… getting too close, and invading the space animals need to relax, recover energy, moult, sleep. So, yet again, we issue a plea to visitors… please stay well back from wildlife. We’re in a biodiversity crisis… don’t make it worse by simply getting too close… make space for nature.

We spent the next day with a group from Aberdeen University, who were on an exchange visit from China. They were very impressed by the seals and we had a great time watching them from the Newburgh side of the river. This is the right way to see seals here – with water between you and them. They are totally relaxed and it’s a great experience for everyone – we get super views and the animals are not bothered by our presence.

Then Wednesday was straight into balsam pulling, with our friends at SISI (the Scottish Invasive Species Initiative). This is an annual task, on the Foveran burn, to try and keep this invasive non-native plant under control. Like many of our other troublesome invasive species, it likes watercourses and can out-compete and smother our riverbank native plants. Introduced as a garden plant in 1839, it soon escaped and is now a menace over much of the UK.

It can grow up to 3m tall inside three months, making it both the tallest and fastest-growing annual plant in the country. No wonder our native plants can’t compete! So it’s down to us to control it as best we can. Thanks to everyone from SIS for organising this and to the volunteers who turned out to try and halt the march of these pink triffids.

You’d think, after a start to the week like that we’d deserve a rest. But no, it was the Big Beach Clean on Thursday. This is always work we wish there wasn’t a need to do, but sadly marine litter is a massive problem, entangling seals, birds and whales, choking turtles or breaking down into micro-plastics that wind up in the food chain. And, for the third time this week, a massive thank you to all the folk who gave up their time to come along and help pick this up: that’s another 79kg of rubbish out of the marine environment now. We spend a lot of our day jobs dealing with the fall-out from people being reckless, or ignorant, or just plain selfish… so, as well as helping with everything else here, you good folks also restore our faith in human nature. Thank you!

At least the end of the week looks like being a bit quieter… we hope! But Danny and Joe will still be out on the reserve, chatting to as many people as possible. If the weather stays fine, they may even run a pop-up seal watch over the weekend. Look out for them and do say hi if you see them. We’re always happy to chat about wildlife!

Whisper it quietly, lest we should scare it away again, but last week it finally felt like summer had arrived at Forvie. The last few days of July into August delivered the sort of fine, hot and settled conditions that we had spent much of the previous two months hoping for in vain, making the rest of the summer to date feel like a bad dream. ‘Better late than never’ was the common consensus among the Reserve team.

The fine weather made for pleasant working conditions for a change, and helped to cheer us all up a little following the tough end to the seabird season. With all the terns and gulls having upped and left earlier than usual, we were able to get on with the laborious process of dismantling, packing up and recovering all the electric fencing equipment from around the ternery – every cloud and all that. This is a mammoth undertaking, and consequently we were exceedingly grateful for the help of volunteers Elaine, Richard and Jim, who all put in a mighty shift alongside the regular Reserve staff.

It’s worth noting the sacrifices that our volunteers make in order to help us out and keep the Reserve ticking over. Elaine was recovering from a nasty cold (as were staffers Joe and Catriona), while Jim gave up a day with his grandson, and Richard even came in on his birthday – all for the sake of hauling a mountain of fencing gear over the dunes in sweltering heat. You can’t argue with that in terms of commitment.

We got the job finished on Wednesday afternoon, and a celebratory commemorative photo-call was accordingly staged. I was tasked with taking the photo; not a great choice given my fractious relationship with all things electronic. Photographers, like artists, each have their own distinctive style, a sort of calling-card by which their work can be recognised. In my case, this takes the form of fingers in front of the lens.

The eerie silence that hung over South Forvie, owing to the lack of terns, was occasionally broken by a chorus of alarm-calls from the Oystercatchers and Curlew assembled on the estuary nearby. This racket signalled the presence of a fishing Osprey – these are no threat whatsoever to the wading-birds in question, but you wouldn’t think so the way the Oystercatchers in particular carry on. In recent days there have been regular Osprey sightings here, and Forvie remains one of the most reliable places in North-east Scotland to see one.

On the wider Reserve, the arrival of some proper summer weather has totally changed the ‘feel’ of the place. The grasses have suddenly changed from green to gold, many of the wild flowers are setting seed, and the heathers are beginning to look their best. Late summer is a particularly attractive time on the Reserve, especially on the coastal heathland of North Forvie, which is vibrant with colour and life.

There are three species of heathers growing at Forvie, and we’ve covered their identification in previous instalments of this blog. Each species has slightly different preferences in terms of the ground conditions, but despite this, it can be possible to find all three growing together on the same spot. This isn’t easy though, and I was pleased to be able to capture the following photo featuring all three species. See if you can pick them out – answer given below the photo!

[Common Heather Calluna vulgaris: fine feathery flowers, foreground; Cross-leaved Heath Erica tetralix: powder-pink clusters of flowers on a tall stem, centre; Bell Heather Erica cinerea: darker purple bell-like flowers, middle/background. Easy, huh?!]

While the heathers are just approaching their best, Forvie’s Bluebells are at their peak at the time of writing, and appear to be particularly abundant this year for whatever reason. In some parts of the Reserve, chiefly the Dune Trail and coast path, they grow densely at the edges of the footpaths, and make for a beautiful sight with their delicate powder-blue flowers nodding gently in the breeze. The sharp-eyed observer may occasionally spot a patch of them which lack the usual blue colour, producing white blooms instead; this is a rare but regular aberration in this and many other plant species.

Another delicate white flower now beginning to appear in bloom is the oddly-named Grass-of-Parnassus, which can be found in the wetter areas along the coast path. Confusingly, this isn’t a grass at all, but a broad-leaved flowering plant with a subtle but distinctive appearance. Each flower has five petals, intricately pin-striped, with golden stamens at their bases, and these are easily recognised with a bit of practice.

There are some who say this flower is a harbinger of autumn, or at the very least the tail-end of summer. A horrifying thought for some, perhaps – especially given that the summer seems barely to have started – but not for me, as it heralds the start of what I consider the most exciting season of the year. Autumn? Bring it on!

The feast of flowers on offer just now makes it a great time for pollinating insects. Along the Dune Trail, stands of Creeping Thistles are abuzz with bumblebees of various species, but chiefly ‘BLTs’ (White-tailed/Buff-tailed Bumblebees). As we’ve explained before, the acronym BLT comes from the two species’ respective scientific names, Bombus lucorum / terrestris.

The same thistle-patch also played host to a substantial gathering of Dark Green Fritillary butterflies this week, with upwards of 20 visible at any one time nectaring on the thistle flowers. These butterflies are in the middle of their flight-season just now, and as a consequence the population comprises a mix of fresh, bright, newly-minted individuals alongside tired, ragged examples that have already been on the wing – and in the wars – for some time.

The insect of the moment, though, has to be the Cinnabar Moth – or rather its caterpillars. These seem to be present on every single Ragwort plant in South Forvie just now, all busily munching and growing. Each individual will be preparing to morph into the pupa in which it will see out the winter, before emerging as an adult moth next summer. Having only arrived at Forvie as a breeding species in 2009 – most probably as a result of climate change – this year has been the first in which the species has been really abundant here.

And just as the flowers feed the insects, so the insects feed many other creatures in the food chain above. Many species of birds are insectivorous, and one of the largest of all insectivores in this country is the Cuckoo. This year, Forvie played host to a singing male Cuckoo in late spring, with his distinctive double-note song carrying for miles across the moor. Then in June we noted a female Cuckoo behaving suspiciously at the north end of the Reserve – looking for a Meadow Pipit’s nest in which to lay her replica egg, perhaps?

The answer was provided for us this week when, completely unexpectedly, a juvenile Cuckoo turned up in our garden on the edge of the Reserve, being fed by a Meadow Pipit. I had seen photos and film of this behaviour before – the preposterous and pitiful sight of the tiny pipit feeding the enormous, insatiably-hungry fledgling – but had never actually seen it in the flesh until now. It’s almost certain that this Cuckoo was fledged from a Meadow Pipit nest between Collieston and the Reserve office, thus confirming the breeding of Cuckoo at Forvie for the first time in living memory.

So a fine and eventful summer week – at last – comes to an end. As we said at the start of this article, it’s better late than never!