We've made the most of two glorious days of sun and warm weather this weekend, with another guided walk along the beach on Sunday and a trip out to Bullers of Buchan on Saturday morning.
Our wander to the lagoon on Sunday afternoon was another brilliant walk, and it's great to introduce people to a part of the reserve that very few others ever visit. Depending who you ask, the highlight was either the incredibly close Arctic Skua harrying the terns on the beach (Johnny's first Skua, and the closest I've ever seen one), the little pod of Harbour Porpoise surfacing just at the lagoon mouth, or the slightly dramatic sheep rescue (it had somehow managed to wedge itself between the double fencing along the dune edge) we had to perform on the way back.
We also managed to see quite a few Dark Green Fritillary butterflies making the most of the Dog Violets in the short grass behind the dunes. Dark Green Fritillary are a bit of a speciality of the reserve and while the dunes are usually the best place to find them, the one below was feeding on the clover just off the Tower Pool Path yesterday afternoon.
On Saturday we'd had a quick trip down to Bullers of Buchan, hoping to find a couple of Puffins for a visitor who'd been to most of the seabird sites around the country and never quite managed to see one. We drew a blank at the pot itself but just a bit down the coast the cliffs were absolutely full of them. We must have seen at least 50 in a few hundred yards, more than I've seen there in the past three years. Earlier in the year we were very worried about Puffing numbers, given how many were washed up on the coast after the storms. While this isn't the most scientific count and we'll have to wait for proper data to come in to see how well our local Puffins have done this year, this is really encouraging (not to mention a relief to me after I'd guaranteed our visitors that there'd be at least one Puffin there this weekend!).
Back at Strathbeg, we're starting to see post-breeding waders returning in good numbers. There's regularly over 100 Lapwing and similar numbers of Curlew out on the low ground. On Sunday our first Ruff of the summer appeared on the pools and the flock of Black-tailed Godwit has grown from single figures up to around 50, lots still in stunning, red summer plumage. Our guided walk out to the lagoon on Sunday found a single Sanderling and a very relaxed Ringed Plover pottering on the sand and there was a Common Sandpiper doing laps on the Starnafin ring pool for much of Saturday morning. We've had the first midday Osprey sighting in a while as well.
We also got a report through BirdTrack of a Wood Warbler on the reserve on the 23rd June. Wood Warbler are very scarce up here, and a visitor would be very lucky to come across one.. If you put the sighting in, could you drop us an email so we can get a bit more info about where and when you saw it? Prize for responding is your very own entry on our year list!