Over the last couple of weeks many of the waders have started to return to the Bay. Over 300 Curlew are being counted and Oystercatcher numbers are up around the 400 mark. Many of these birds will have local breeding sites. Good numbers of Redshank are also being seen although they are a bit down from a peak of 600+ a week or so ago. Other waders around include Dunlin, Knot, Sanderling, Black and Bar-tailed Godwit, a couple of Greenshank, Common Sandpiper and a few returning Turnstone.
On the beach and offshore then Terns are the most numerous birds at present with 300+ Common Tern, 130 Arctic and even 14 Little Tern (including 2 juveniles) on the beach recently. It isn’t certain where these Little Tern will have come from as there are no known breeding sites in Moray at the moment.
On shore in the Reserve many of the spring flowers have now gone over, but the heather around the beach car park area is starting to look good and will continue to flower through August. The star plant in flower at the moment though is the Green-flowered Helleborine (Epipactis phyllanthes). This is a type of orchid and is a rare plant. The site on the edge of the Reserve is the only reported one in Scotland, so how it got all the way to Findhorn is a bit of a mystery.
