The islands in Aberdeenshire's Loch of Strathbeg have historically been safe havens for breeding birds, being free from disturbance by humans and foxes. Species such as common and sandwich tern, tufted and eider duck and cormorant have successfully bred there over many years.
However, this valuable habitat had declined as several natural gravel banks and beaches along this stretch of coast were adversely affected by sand and gravel extraction, human disturbance, pipelines and vehicle access. This project, to build a gravel island for breeding birds, aimed to counteract the loss of nearby gravel-based bird breeding sites due to coastal gravel and sand extraction, and to improve the habitat in an area containing an old sand quarry.
Rattray Island is one of only two islands now left in the Loch of Strathbeg. There used to be four islands, but erosion by wind and wave action caused two to be completely lost, and Rattray Island to become all but unusable by breeding birds.
Mr James Comyn, whose family owns Rattray Island, gave permission to restore it, by building it up with boulders and gravel. Planning permission was granted on condition that an archaeological survey be carried out before work commenced; this survey was done but no archaeological interest was found. Mr Gordon Ross, a local farmer, donated several tons of boulders, which he had gathered off his fields at Coralhill farm over many years. A local firm of civil engineers was contracted to carry out the work.
Loch of Strathbeg is very shallow, with depths of less than 1 metre during low water levels. It was important to carry out the restoration work after a prolonged period of low rainfall and before the breeding birds returned to the reserve.
All the materials - boulders and gravel - were transported to and stored on Rattray Estate land at the south end of the loch. Our contractor had purchased a rubber-tracked dump truck and awaited delivery before he could commence.
Materials were transported out to the island by the dump truck, and a 17 tonne slew digger with wide tracks was used to spread the boulders and increase the height of the island. The boulders were placed in the centre of the eroded remains of the island and levelled out. This was then topped off with several tonnes of washed gravel.
Thanks to the use of specialist machinery, this job only took about 6 hours to finish, thereby minimising disturbance of the reserve, which still had several thousand greylag geese roosting on it.
RSPB staff then went out to the island with some clay tiles to make some shelters for fledglings in times of rough weather.
By early June 2003, RSPB were delighted to see their work rewarded, with eleven pairs of common tern and four cormorants nesting on Rattray Island!
Contact
RSPB Scotland
Dunedin House
25 Ravelston Terrace
Edinburgh
EH4 3TP
Telephone: 0131 311 6500
www.rspb.org.uk