Presumed bird flu victims are still being washed up on Moray Firth beaches. This is the 6th Great Northern Diver that Bev Forbes has found this summer. It is difficult to fathom out how species like this are being affected.

🎉Huge congratulations to our Marine Ornithology Advisor, Dr Helen Wade, who has just been appointed a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Young Academy of Scotland group - representing some of the nation’s most innovative young professionals. 👏 ow.ly/mnh650Kqa9H

I see that many people complain that peat-free composts are not as good as peat based ones. I have not used peat in a growing medium for over 25 years and have never had any problems at all. Some are better than others but ALL are better than using peat!

Scotland supports 60% (9,600 pairs) of the world breeding population of great #skua. With 85% reductions in AOTs at some Scottish colonies, >1400 birds reported dead on #Foula alone & this visible reduction in passage rates - it’s an extremely worrying picture #AvianInfluenza

'Otters' in ink by Jackie Morris, artist, author and illustrator who lives and works in a small cottage by the sea in Wales #WomensArt

With increasing reports of dead and sick guillemots and shoreline foraging, could people tag their reports with #AukWreck2 Hope this isn’t tempting fate but useful to establish this now to help monitor progress. A “wreck” is a large mortality of #seabirds. Please RT

Black socks in the rain ! Lucía Paz Díaz-Ortiz.hackett.3 has today's #FoxOfTheDay , thank you Lucia !

The geese calling as they return to roost has to be one of the best sounds of #autumn in #EastLothian. #LoveEastLothian 📷Jackie Shuttleworth

1/6 #BOUasm22 #SESH1 Including additional information such as habitat to biological recording schemes is challenging as there isn’t one simple solution. There are certain questions that need to be raised, so we developed a framework to help scheme organisers with this issue.

1/6 In 2020, Scottish government designated a suite of marine special protected areas (SPAs) to protect our inshore wintering waterfowl. They protect a range of species and can be very large sites. So, how do we monitor them effectively? #ornithology #BOUasm22 #sesh1

2/6 In January & March 2020, we deployed concurrent citizen science vantage point surveys and digital aerial surveys across the Moray Firth SPA to survey 11 species of inshore wintering waterfowl. #CitizenScience #BOUasm22 #sesh1

3/6 We we’re interested in whether citizen science counts could act as a proxy for DAS to ascertain both distribution and abundance. #BOUasm22 #sesh1

4/6 Results showed that distribution could be well characterised by citizen science vantage point counts, but that densities and counts were not comparable with DAS suggesting that they could not be used as a proxy. #BOUasm22 #sesh1 #ornithology

5/6 Results point to each survey being appropriate for a different suite of species based on species ecology e.g divers with a more offshore ecology were better detected by DAS whereas inshore species are better detected by citizen science VP surveys. #BOUasm22 #sesh1

6/6 Citizen science proved to be a valuable survey for certain species, but also prove to be a key avenue for increasing engagement with our natural world and for developing stewardship of our marine environments. #BOUasm22 #sesh1

Huge effort by the Scottish #seabird community to provide this data amidst devastating scales of mortality. Thank you. #avianflu #HPAI Former NatureScot account

Interested in influencing #seabird #conservation in Scotland? We’d love to hear from you. 2 permanent #marine #ornithology adviser posts available ⁦Former NatureScot account⁩ 👇 ejki.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candidat…

1/4 It’s challenging counting wildlife, particularly highly mobile species such as waterfowl. That’s why we’ve completed a study into the best methods to count birds at sea, using techniques such as visual aerial surveys, digital area surveys, boat-based & shore-based surveys.

NatureScot welcomes this consultation. Sandeels play a crucial role in food chains - ensuring their health could help recover nature in our seas. Seabirds have been hard hit by climate change & avian flu, so we must explore all options to help boost their recovery and resilience.