📌 Nature reserve in Crawton, Aberdeenshire
★★★★
The mostly quiet Aberdeenshire coastline south of Stonehaven has a very noisy surprise in store for nature lovers. 50 metre-tall cliffs at RSPB Fowlsheugh welcome over 130,000 seabirds every late spring and early summer along with the associated stink and sound. Guillemots, razorbills and kittiwakes are among the star species, and small numbers of puffins can usually be seen on or near the a grassy area below a dark cavity halfway up one of the cliff faces (see photos below). Gaze out to sea, and you might even glimpse the odd seal or even dolphins. The sheer scale of the cliffs and breeding area is really quite impressive – a high-rise city with coastal views that any estate agent would wax lyrical about. One more thing – after rainfall, there’s an impressive waterfall at the southern end of the reserve, viewable by following the access road south for a short distance around a rocky inlet, taking a separate path on the left out onto the next headland, then looking north.
🌍 Location
📌 Minor road end at Crawton, 1 mi north of Catterline
🧭 O.S. Grid Reference: NO 881802
🛰️ GPS coordinates: 56.912824,-2.197449
❌ No public transport within 1 mi
🚗 Car park (gets full)
📝 Key info
⌚ Always open
🎫 Free
💬 From the car park it’s a 5 to 10-min walk through the reserve to the main viewpoints on narrow, clifftop paths with unprotected drops – care required (⬤ Easy).
