Montrose Basin

We spent a lovely few days in Montrose and had several walks round the Montrose Basin. Our first walk was on a beautiful evening, with wonderful warm, low sunlight, redwings flying around the bushes round the paths and a good number of geese and ducks on the water.

Our other walks all took place in dreich, drizzly weather (for non-Scots unfamiliar with the term dreich, just look at the photos and you'll get the idea!). The mist was incredibly atmospheric and we saw thousands of pink footed geese, grazing on the mudflats, taking off in great honking flocks and then landing again to continue grazing. There are apparently 65 000 pink footed geese at the Basin now and more still arriving! We saw more shelduck than we've ever seen anywhere (I always love the shelduck's patchwork quilt appearance) and lots of eider too. We got very close to the eider, not only close enough to have a good look at the males' characteristic green 'ears' and pinkinsh breasts but to hear the whole flock making a weird 'woo-ooo' sound under its breath. There were also lots of lapwings, always a joy to see with their wonderfully floppy wings and their dancing flight, lots of oystercatcher and curlew too (both of which have lovely haunting calls). Plenty of smaller waders too, redshanks which are easy to recognise because of their red legs but others too, which in poor light and at quite a distance were much more difficult to recognise.

There is a walk round the basin and a Visitor Centre (run by Scottish Wildlife Trust) complete with outdoor hides and an indoor area that overlooks the Basin through huge picture windows lined with high quality telescopes and binoculars.

A wonderful place to go birding!