An animal lover has gone back to tallying up dead birds on Brora beach as suspected avian flu victims go back on the rise.
Mum-of-two Beverley Forbes counted 50 carcases including puffins, two highly-protected redwings and a red throated 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?”
Unglamorous job but someone has to do it
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 say 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 too test.
‘Tip of the iceberg with bird flu?’
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.”
Concern for common garden birds
Due to their declining numbers, redwings and red-throated divers, which can stay under water for more than a minute, 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 or nests.
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.
She said that could be worrying because she has seen them come inland and eat berries off the trees, which brings them into contact with other garden bird species.
Bird flu outbreaks rise at poultry premises
The number of control zones in place in Scotland has risen from six to nine.
A poultry bird flu outbreak at a premises in Banff and two in Turriff are now on the list which also hold two sites each in Orkney and Aberdeenshire, and one each in Lewis and in East Ayrshire.
Do not touch dead or dying birds
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 33 55 77.
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