The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Rise in dead birds found along beach
Abird lover has gone back to tallying-up dead birds on Brora beach as suspected bird flu victims rise again.
Mum-of-two Beverley Forbes counted 50 carcasses including puffins, two highly protected redwings, and a redthroated diver, with a dying razorbill among the dead.
She said: “That’s the first time I’ve been out on the beach for a few weeks and the first thing I see is this poor razorbill suffering the tell-tale twisty neck death throe signs of bird flu.
“It’s horrible watching them die like this, what on earth is it doing to these poor birds?”
The bird flu picture across the rest of the north and the north-east is being pulled together by Scotland’s nature agency, NatureScot.
It launched a surveillance network earlier this month, but says it’s “too early to provide information”.
Beverley took on the unglamorous job of tallying hundreds of dead birds on the two-mile long beach in the spring, even storing a dead gannet in her freezer for experts to test.
But she says the latest count of 50 which took in nine bird species, with herring gulls swelling the numbers, was the highest in several months.
She added: “The virus did hang around in the summer but the numbers did go down.
“Hopefully we aren’t once again on the cusp of another explosion in dead bird numbers, hopefully this isn’t the tip of the iceberg.”
Due to their declining numbers, redwings and red-throated divers are listed as a Schedule 1 species of the Wildlife and Countryside Act.
The Act makes it an offence to intentionally kill, injure or take any of these wild birds or their eggs.
Beverley said she hopes that the pair of dead redwings she found close together on the shoreline had died of exhaustion and not bird flu.
The number of control zones in place in Scotland has risen from six to nine.
A poultry bird flu outbreak at premises in Banff and two in Turriff are now on the list which also holds two sites each in Orkney and Aberdeenshire, and one each in Lewis and in East Ayrshire.
If you find a dead bird of prey, three dead gulls or wild waterfowl (swans, geese or ducks), or five or more dead wild birds of any other species at the same place at the same time, phone Defra on 03459 335577.