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Issue 03Thursday 3 September 2026

Analysis

We got to choose our scars. Bass Rock didn't get a vote.

There's a steel feather on the coastal path remembering our pandemic. A few hundred yards offshore are the birds that lived through theirs, and some of them are still carrying it in their eyes.

NB By NB Today, North Berwick·6 min read

This is an argument, not a report. What follows is my own reading and my own view, and I could be wrong. Reply to the email and tell me if you think so.

What's established

The sourced ground this piece stands on. Everything after it is my reading of it.

On the town

  • North Berwick's Covid-era street changes were a mixed bag. Under Spaces for People, a one-way system on Law Road allowed the footway to be widened. Early proposals to pedestrianise the town centre and move parking to the putting green were dropped after local opposition, and a smaller scheme was devised for the east end of the High Street instead. A temporary one-way order on Market Place, introduced for Covid safety, was made permanent by the council's cabinet in January 2025, alongside the east-end High Street changes.East Lothian Council, Spaces for People · East Lothian Courier, Law Road one-way · East Lothian Courier, changes made permanent
  • No12 Hotel & Bistro's owners told planners that their car-park beer garden "saved the business" in 2020, and that it allowed all staff to come off furlough for a period and let them employ another eight people. Council planners granted a five-year extension, subject to conditions.East Lothian Courier, outdoor area approved
  • North Berwick is Scotland's most expensive seaside town: Bank of Scotland put the average house price at £440,172 in 2022, ahead of St Andrews at £421,528, with Scottish coastal prices up 11% that year.Bank of Scotland / Lloyds Banking Group, 5 April 2023
  • A 2022 survey by the North Berwick Environment and Heritage Trust found that at least 35% of housing stock in the town centre was designated as holiday-let accommodation — a floor, not a ceiling, since it counted only four booking platforms. The Trust's own account puts the figure as high as 50%. Victoria Road was reported as having hardly any permanent residents; on Balfour Street they were probably in the minority.East Lothian Courier, on the study · NB Heritage, planning matters
  • Three Controlled Parking Zones — Central, East and West — came into effect in North Berwick on 1 June 2026, with penalty charge notices issued from 26 June. The scheme followed years of pressure from visitor traffic and is still being argued over.East Lothian Council, North Berwick parking scheme
  • North Berwick's official Covid memorial is a curved steel feather set in the landscape beside the coastal path, one of six Gill White made for East Lothian under Remembering Together — the others are at Musselburgh, Tranent, Prestonpans, Haddington and near Dunbar. She chose feathers for "the comfort that is often found in seeing movements of birds and butterflies in flight, which can bring comfort that a loved one's presence is still near".Gill White, on the trail · Remembering Together, East Lothian
  • Separately, the former telephone cabins on Westgate were turned into a micro art gallery by pARTicipate, its wall painted with feathers and carrying the names of 50–60 people who have died, added by residents including children. The feather imagery there comes from a Felicity Warner line about death being like a feather taking off in the wind; North Berwick's Compassionate Community group ran its first Absent Friends visual arts workshop in 2019.East Lothian Courier, artwork remembers loved ones

On the rock

  • The outbreak reached North Berwick's beaches before it was named. In late May 2022, unusual numbers of dead gannets washed up along the East Lothian shoreline; weeks later, dead birds were spotted on the Bass through the Scottish Seabird Centre's own cameras. Two were taken off the island for Defra testing along with birds from North Berwick beaches, and highly pathogenic avian flu, H5N1, was confirmed in June 2022.Scottish Seabird Centre, disease
  • The colony's annual adult death rate rose from an average of about 6% over the preceding 11 years to roughly 33% during the outbreak, and researchers believe full recovery could take up to two decades. A single drone survey of the Bass in June 2022 counted more than 5,000 dead birds from the imagery alone.Edinburgh Evening News, two decades to recover · Scottish Seabird Centre, disease
  • A drone survey in July 2025 counted 52,459 apparently occupied nest sites on the Bass — around 30% down, or 22,800 fewer, than the last complete pre-outbreak count in 2014.University of Edinburgh, July 2025 count
  • Some surviving gannets developed something researchers had never properly documented before 2022: eyes changing from pale blue to mottled or completely black. A peer-reviewed study found that 78% of black-eyed birds tested carried antibodies to H5N1, making the change highly likely to be linked to previous infection.British Ornithologists' Union, Jude Lane · Lane et al. 2023, Ibis, doi:10.1111/ibi.13275
  • A more recent study of eyes taken from Bass Rock birds, not yet peer-reviewed, suggests the change is not simply pigmentation but physical damage: loss of a protective layer in the iris, disorganised cells beneath it and inflammation. One severely affected eye examined in detail belonged to a bird that was blind, with a detached retina.Preprint, not yet peer-reviewed — treat as provisional
  • What we don't know: whether surviving black-eyed birds can all see normally, whether the colony will ever return to its old size, or whether another outbreak will come.No published finding either way

I've been walking the coastal paths around North Berwick a lot this year. The dog likes it. So do I, mostly for the view.

Following the path east, towards Drift, it meets the green of the 13th hole and suddenly the water is right there. The Bass sits offshore. And beside the path, somebody has put a feather on a rock.

It's steel, polished, stretched long and thin. There's a little wooden sign nearby with a QR code if you want the story behind it.

I've found myself thinking about that feather quite a lot.

The scars we chose

Because Covid left scars all over North Berwick. But almost all of ours came with some element of choice.

Someone proposed pedestrianising the town centre. People objected, and it didn't happen. Market Place became one-way as an emergency measure. Later, a committee looked at it again and decided to keep it. A beer garden appeared in a car park because a business was trying to survive. It is still there now, on a five-year approval.

Even some of the more difficult changes are made up of human decisions: holiday lets, soaring house prices, the pressure of visitors, the parking scheme we're still fighting about. Messy ones, sometimes unfair ones, but decisions nonetheless.

Every one of these was argued over Pedestrianisation: proposed, opposed, dropped. Law Road: footway widened under Spaces for People. Market Place: temporary one-way order, later made permanent by committee. No12's car-park beer garden: emergency measure, then a five-year extension. The Controlled Parking Zone: years of pressure, live since June 2026, still contested. Consultations, objections, votes, minutes.

They can be challenged. Reversed. Extended. Voted on. Written about. We get to negotiate with the things our pandemic left behind.

And then there is the feather

Of all North Berwick's Covid scars, this one was deliberately created to mean something. A bird was chosen because flight can suggest continuity: the idea that someone you have lost has not entirely disappeared.

It's a lovely thought.

And then, a couple of hundred yards offshore, there are the actual birds.

In 2022, avian flu tore through the Bass Rock gannet colony. In one season, something like a third of its adults died.

6% → 33%
The colony's annual adult death rate before the outbreak, averaged over 11 years, and during it. A single drone survey in June 2022 counted over 5,000 dead birds from the imagery alone. Researchers think full recovery could take up to two decades.

The survivors did not get a sculpture.

Some of them got black eyes.

Not metaphorically. The pale blue eyes that appear on postcards, photographs and tea towels around town physically changed. Researchers now think that, in at least some birds, the blackening is evidence of damage left behind by the infection: tissue lost, cells disrupted, inflammation inside the eye.

What the black eyes actually are — and what's still uncertain A peer-reviewed study found 78% of black-eyed birds tested carried antibodies to avian flu, which is why the change is read as a mark of surviving infection. A newer study of eyes taken from Bass Rock birds goes further, describing loss of a protective layer in the iris, disorganised cells beneath it and inflammation. That second study has not yet been peer-reviewed, so treat it as provisional. Nobody has established whether black-eyed survivors can all see normally.

One of the badly affected birds examined was blind.

Nobody voted on that. There was no consultation. No temporary order. No five-year extension.

The birds survived, or they didn't. And some of the ones that survived carried the evidence with them.

Two memorials, almost within sight of each other

That, I think, is the strange thing about these two Covid memorials sitting almost within sight of each other. One is steel. The other is still healing, or not, in the eyes of birds most of us never look closely at.

We chose a bird to represent resilience and continuity at almost exactly the moment the actual birds offshore were discovering how brutally limited both can be.

The metaphor and the reality were happening a few hundred yards apart. Only one of them came with an interpretation board.

What I'm not arguing

I don't think that means anyone made a bad choice.

Human grief and the collapse of a seabird colony are not equivalent, and pretending they are would cheapen both. People in North Berwick lost parents, partners, friends and years of ordinary life. A memorial to that deserves to exist on its own terms.

Nor am I arguing that the gannets need a matching plaque.

The point is narrower than that. We chose how to remember what happened to us. We discussed which emergency changes to keep. We removed some and made others permanent. We built a memorial and chose what it would mean. Four years later, we're still negotiating the consequences of that strange period in everything from streets to businesses to parking.

Bass Rock never got any of those choices. Its pandemic is recorded in missing nest sites, in a colony still smaller than it was, and perhaps most strikingly of all, in the eyes of the birds that lived through it.

52,459
Nest sites counted on the Bass in a drone survey in July 2025 — around 22,800 fewer than the last full count before the outbreak. That gap is the closest thing the colony has to a memorial.

Next time you walk the path

And maybe that is worth noticing, precisely because the feather is there.

Stop for a moment beside it. Then look past it, out to the rock. The gannets are still there too: most apparently fine, some carrying scars we are only beginning to understand.

We got to choose how we'd remember our pandemic. They never got a say in theirs, and they're still living with it.

Issue 03 · Thursday 3 September 2026 ← Back to the archive