Montrose Basin is an enclosed estuary of the river South Esk covering 750 hectares, home to over 80,000 migratory birds – including pink-footed geese, Arctic terns, knots and sedge warblers. Our four-star visitor centre offers a great day out for all the family in Angus.
Please note the Montrose Basin Visitor Centre is currently on reduced opening hours. We are open Thursday-Monday. Please see our timeslots in the booking system below.
Click on a heading below to find out more about visiting Montrose Basin.
Our visitor centre currently has a timeslot booking system in place. (The walks around the reserve remain open and free of charge, and take place from other car parks around the Basin)
Information we collect from visitors to the Trust, via our booking systems, will also be used to support the NHS Scotland’s Test and Protect service and we will disclose relevant personal information to the service if requested up to 21 days following your visit. For more details, please click here.
Any questions? If you have a question about your ticket or would like information on moving timeslots/refunds, please email montrosebasin@scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk
Highlights include:
- Telescopes and binoculars set up and ready to use
- Interpretation about the wildlife, geology and history of the Basin
- Fairtrade tea and coffee available – relax with panoramic views across the Basin
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Range of wildlife gifts available from our gift shop
What’s open?
The visitor centre, hides, and walks are all open. The visitor centre is the only place on the reserve that has a pre-booked timeslot system. It is open Thursday-Monday. The reserve walks and hides are always open, but please be aware that they take place from other car parks around the Basin.
We’re Good to Go
“We’re Good To Go” is the official UK mark to signal that a tourism and hospitality business has worked hard to follow government and industry COVID-19 guidelines and has a process in place to maintain cleanliness and aid social distancing.
Can I bring my dog?
Dogs, kept under control, are allowed on all the walks around Montrose Basin but not inside the visitor centre itself (unless they are assistance dogs).
This visitor attraction has decided to maintain mitigation measures, including managing capacities and visitor flow, use of hand sanitation stations and enhanced cleaning protocols, until otherwise announced, in accordance with industry best practice and guidance endorsed by the Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions.
In line with Scottish Government guidelines to keep you and our staff and volunteers safe, the visitor centre now has pre-booked timed entry, enhanced cleaning, screens, hand sanitising stations, and social distancing and face covering policies.
Whether you live in Scotland or you’re just visiting, please download the ‘Check In Scotland’ app from Google Play or the Apple app store before you visit. This will speed up our Test and Protect procedure.
To allow time for cleaning, the visitor centre now closes for an hour at lunch time, so please make note of the timeslots in our booking section.
We want you to have a safe and enjoyable visit to our centre. Watch our virtual walk through here to see what to expect on your visit.
Why visit?
Best time to visit?
- May to Sept for fishing osprey
- Oct to Feb for wintering geese
- Sept to Feb for kingfisher
- Any time for seals
- Any time for wildfowl and waders
Visit for:
- birdwatching
- coasts
- geology
- scenery
- mammals
Other information
Join today and help support our conservation work, with free access to all our visitor centres and around 120 reserves. Your support will protect Scotland’s Wildlife for the Future. Join in the centre, and you’ll receive a free gift!
Events
Please keep an eye on the events page or our Facebook page for upcoming events.
Discover the Basin with one of our self-guided audio tours
If you would like to learn more about the Basin, our audio tours are a great place to start. Choose from four tours available through izi.TRAVEL. These tours can be accessed online or through the izi.TRAVEL mobile app available for iPhone and Android.
Montrose Basin has now entered that unclear divide between seasons: the swifts have already departed for Africa, and our common terns are definitely gathering together in preparation for their journey south. But one of our favourite Summer visitors is the osprey, and we’re still seeing them fishing for flatfish on the Basin every day from the visitor centre. Autumn came into our minds earlier than usual this year as hundreds of Canada and greylag geese began appearing on the Basin…
Summer is officially here, and for the past few weeks we’ve been enjoying seeing a whole variety of recently fledged birds around the visitor centre. So many, in fact, that we’ve been keeping a list! Juvenile birds cause a lot of confusion at this time of year. They often look very different to their adult counterparts, sometimes even sporting different colours, patterns, and bird calls. We’ve found that visitors are sometimes perplexed by fledgling birds looking, if anything, bigger than…
The Spring equinox is on March 20th, and the arrival of this new season is both exciting and bittersweet. The emphasis is perhaps more on ‘bittersweet’ this year, with lockdown meaning we’re unable to share the excitement with volunteers and visitors to Montrose Basin. But even in a normal year, March always brings with it a strange lull in the wildlife on the reserve. Winter is one of the best times to visit the Basin – kingfisher sightings could almost…
It’s almost been an entire year since the world came to a halt. The UK’s first lockdown came into effect on March 16th 2020, but the visitor centres had already been closed by this point. “The world came to a halt” is a phrase that is often used when we look back on the beginning of 2020, but there’s comfort to be found in the fact that, actually, it didn’t. Our usual routines may have been put on hold, but…
It’s a question we’re often asked at Montrose Basin Visitor Centre and not one that’s easy to answer – it’s affected by the passage of time, the location, and seasons. The answer is also, invariably, subject to personal bias and opinion. (Everyone has his or her favourite!). For example, many people would consider kingfishers rare, but that’s more because they’re generally so elusive. We wouldn’t describe them as ‘rare’ here, with our regular sightings throughout autumn and winter. So, we…
The magpies of Montrose have always been a bit of a mystery – despite being widespread across the UK, it was only recently that we started recording them on the Montrose Basin reserve. Magpie sightings are so unusual from our visitor centre, in fact, that they go under our ‘less common’ section on our sightings board (accompanied by exotic birds like spoonbills and cranes). Magpies are members of the corvid family, so are closely related to crows, jackdaws, and ravens.…
The autumn equinox has just passed, but the unmistakable ‘heralds of autumn’ were making their voices heard well before that. People across Scotland heard their first pink-footed geese of the season quite early this year: reports of around 200 geese came through from northern Scotland in the early hours of 6 September, and later that same day, 200 appeared at Montrose Basin! Whether or not they were the same ones is impossible to say, but it was confirmation of an…
The journey towards re-opening was a challenging – but rewarding – one for the visitor centre teams across Scotland. It took a huge amount of planning from people all across the Scottish Wildlife Trust. This time last year, the ideas of social distancing, screens, face coverings, and online booking systems were quite foreign to us, but we’re proud to say that we’ve quickly become very confident with the “new normal” since re-opening earlier this month. The visitor centre staff at…