Montrose Basin is an enclosed estuary of the river South Esk covering 750 hectares of tidal mudflats offering feeding and roosting ground to a plethora of bird species.
In autumn and winter, the Basin is home to over 100,000 migratory birds including pink-footed geese, wigeon and a variety of other waterfowl and waders, while during the spring and summer months the estuary supports various breeding colonies including sand martins, common terns and eider.
Our four-star visitor centre offers a great day out for all the family in Angus.
Members receive free entry and fast-track access. Non-members can buy tickets on the door or pre-book by clicking the button below.
Buy tickets
Join today to get free access to all our visitor centres and help protect Scotland’s wildlife for the future.
The visitor centre is now open daily, 10:30am-5pm. Please note the visitor centre may close from 1pm to 1:30pm for lunch. All walks and hides around the Basin remain open at all times, but these start from different car parks. There are no walks that take place from the visitor centre car park.
Please note that dogs are allowed on the reserve walks, but not inside the visitor centre itself.
Why visit?
The Montrose Basin Visitor Centre offers panoramic views across the reserve. Telescopes and binoculars will be available for you to see the wildlife up close.
We serve hot drinks, and we have a small wildlife-themed gift shop with a variety of products for all ages.
A range of children’s activities are always available in the centre.
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, wildfowl and waders
Visit for:
- birdwatching
- coasts
- geology
- scenery
- mammals
Other information
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.
At 5:46pm on 23 May, Loch of the Lowes welcomed their third and final osprey hatchling of the season. Whilst we may not have these spectacular pescatarian raptors nesting on the reserve, we are privileged to be able to witness the fledging of our own feathered friends right here at Montrose Basin. Here are a few species you can expect to see in the coming weeks… Our first to fledge of 2022 has been a Blackbird (Turdus merula) family. We…
Regular visitors to Montrose basin and its visitor centre will be aware that winter is usually an incredible time for spotting kingfishers on the reserve. The famous ‘kingfisher perch’ in front of the centre’s windows has, in the past, been a reliable part of a resident kingfisher’s daily routine. It wasn’t unusual for visitors to Montrose Basin to be guarantees an amazing view of our kingfisher, if visiting at the right time of year. The winter of 2021/22 has strayed…
Autumn at Montrose Basin is always an exciting thing to experience. Wading birds return to the reserve after breeding season, kingfisher sightings increase, and by the end of September, the Basin becomes home to tens of thousands of pink-footed geese. Pink-footed geese migrate from Iceland and Greenland to Scotland in early to mid September, and by the middle of October, Montrose Basin can hold over 10% of the entire Icelandic population at one time! They roost on the reserve every…
Only a few months ago, I became an employee for the Scottish Wildlife Trust here at Montrose Basin Visitor Centre. I am on a six-month placement Kickstart scheme until December. Within this post, I would like to recap on my time here at the Basin so far and my most memorable moments. For my first memorable moment, I want to talk about my first working day here, as we had a very interesting visitor fly into the centre. A juvenile…
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…