A puffin has become the leading actor on TV cameras at Troup Head  bird reserve after it made its burrow right in front of the live bird-watching camera. The colourful little seabird can be watched entering and leaving its burrow, which may have chicks inside.

The final RSPB bird watching evening of the summer at Troup Head takes place on Tuesday, August 9 from 6pm-8pm.

As well as puffins, visitors will be able to watch at close hand the only mainland gannet colony in Britain, with RSPB experts on hand. There are 3,000 pairs of the beautiful seabirds nest on the towering cliffs every summer.

Good news for the thousands of visitors who use service buses to get around.

The biggest bus operator in the North of Scotland is reducing the price of many of its multiple journey day tickets.

The firm is introducing a zonal system for calculating fares. One route to benefit is the service between Banff/Macduff/Turriff and Aberdeen, where weekly tickets are being reduced.

The company have also announced that they are freezing prices on their single and return ticket prices.

More details from the company's website: www.stagecoachbus.com

A basking shark has been spotted in Banff Bay, and photographed by a local man. An expert guessed the animal was a young male,which would probably make its way back to the Atlantic, where they are resident.

Banffshire Coast Tourist Partnership were recently awarded £35,000 funding from a combination of the Rural Tourism Business Support project, the VisitScotland Growth Fund and Aberdeenshire Council.

Over the next 18 months, tourism businesses along the Banffshire Coast will have the opportunity to participate in several significant marketing initiatives, thanks to a recent funding award of £35,000.

The funding, from a combination of the Rural Tourism Business Support project, the VisitScotland Growth Fund and Aberdeenshire Council, will enable the Banffshire Coast Tourism Group to further develop and market the Banffshire Coast as a highly attractive visitor destination.

Roger Goodyear, Chair of the Banffshire Coast Tourism Partnership, commented: "This award is a fantastic opportunity to promote our area to both first time and returning visitors, and follows on from a very successful short marketing campaign run at the beginning of this year which resulted in visits to our website (www.banffshirecoast.com) rising by more than 1500%."

The four marketing initiatives fall under two themes - Outdoor and Ancestral.  A full-colour 48-page pocket Area Guide, to be distributed throughout Scotland and the Banffshire area, will contain high-quality imagery and editorial content to encourage both visits to and wider exploration of the area.  The other three initiatives will focus on the area's strengths of Marine Life, Walking and Birdwatching, and Ancestral.  They will all involve a combination of activities, including the creation of new sections for the website, e-flyer campaigns to targeted market segments, PR trips and familiarisation visits, as well as social media campaigns.  All four initiatives will provide tourism businesses in the area excellent opportunities to advertise their own individual offering.

Roger Goodyear commented further:  "The Banffshire Coast has a wide range of tourism attractions and services, but these have never been brought together in a way which is 'visitor friendly'.  The planned campaigns will draw all of these elements together in one place and promote comprehensive packages and itineraries to those with these specific interests - for the very first time.  We will be showing visitors just how they can spend their time in our area - whether one day, a few days or longer.  By focussing on the web and social media, we will be able to achieve more significant results than the traditional advertising routes which are out of the reach of our budget, as well as utilising the most up-to-date promotional tools.  We are very grateful to our 3 funding partners - without whom we would not be in a position to make this step change in tourism on the Banffshire Coast."

For more information, please contact:  Zillah Jamieson, Director, Banffshire Coast Tourism Partnership Limited; 01542 840314; zillahj@btinternet.com

Macduff will be ablaze with a new set of Christmas lights this year, thanks to fundraising efforts by the Banff and Macduff Christmas Lights Association.

The lights in Banff and Macduff will be officially switched on at a ceremony on the Plainstones, on Low Street, Banff on the afternoon of Saturday November 27.

There will be stalls, Santa's grotto, horse and cart rides, Macduff RNLI, the coastguard and fire service. Music from the Banff Castle Pipe band, singers and a magician.

The event starts at 12.30pm, and the switch on is at 4.30pm.

Great news for the Banffshire Coast Tourism Partnership. Our new mobile website is now live on-line, and available to all who use their mobile phones to access the internet.

This is the future! It means that folk in their cars, or in the street can find out where to go, where to shop, where to eat, where to stay etc in our area, just with a few clicks on their mobiles.

The Banffshire Coast mobile website includes some minor mods to make it easier to use and to read on small  phone screens.

Thanks go to our IT gurus at blue square for creating it.

If you don’t have an internet enabled  phone, you can get a look at the mobile website on:  http://m.banffshirecoast.com/  To see how it actually  looks on a phone screen, make your viewing window much narrower. (Of course, it is much smaller on a phone too.)

Macduff Marine Aquarium have bid a reluctant farewell to one of their biggest residents, a six foot conger eel called Rip. But Rip seemed reluctant to leave, and had to be persuaded to go when he was released into the Moray Firth just outside the aquarium.

The Aquarium's motive on letting Rip return to the wild is both compassionate and passionate. Male congers go through a mid life crisis, when they head for the only time in their lives to the breeding grounds near the Azores, off the African coast, to find a mate, and die.

Rip was named for his habit of tearing food from the divers' hands who hand feed him in the Aquarium's giant 16 five metre tank. After six years at the Aquarium, he was showing the tell-tale signs of unrequited love: leaving his permanent hidey-hole, and swimming in daylight hours.

Rip quite happily went into his escape route, a large bag. But when it was lowered by crane into the firth, it took some persuasion by the Aquarium's divers to entice him from the safety of the bag, and set off on his one way mission.

But he eventually took the plunge and was last seen heading out to sea.

Visitors to Macduff Marine Aquarium can look in microscopic detail at the creatures in the Aquarium's sea lab, using binocular microscopes which can project in high definition onto a plasma screen. An underwater camera also allows the smallest sea life in the lab to be filmed and seen in intricate detail.

The new equipment is a result of a successful £2,000 bid to the People's Postcode Lottery by the Aquarium, and the Aquarium say it really enhances the Sea Lab.

An exhibition of traditional craft skills will be a major part of the annual COAST Arts Festival at Banff and Macduff in May 2012.  Banff and Buchan Arts Forum is now appealing for entries for Show Your Hand which will showcase traditional pursuits from ceramics to leather work and enamelling to blacksmithing.  This will be a major exhibition for the Festival and an important way to revealing the skills that are being lost.

A voluntary group of local residents, artists and community organisations are now hard at work preparing for COAST 2012.  The 5th COAST Festival will take place from Friday 25th May 2012 to Sunday 27th May 2012. 

The programme will contain a range of events, with the theme for the core events being "The Creative Individual".  The Festival will be presenting experienced artists, art students, the work of traditional artisans and the often unseen work of the home-based creator.  The "Show Your Hand" exhibition will feature artworks and artifacts showing traditional artisan skills, from ceramics and leatherwork, to enamelling to smithing.  The Festival will also have family fun events, including the ever popular sandcastle competition, the spectacular duck race, and a programme of hands-on workshops for all ages.  Brochures will be available at the end of April.

If you want to create an event, please contact the organisers at info@coastfestival.org.uk.

The first elements of ground-breaking marketing initiatives for the Banffshire Coast area have now been launched.  The website now contains a new section focusing on one of the area's key attractions, Dolphins and Marine Life, as well as ideas for Great Days Out along our coastline.  These features will make it easy for visitors to find useful information not only about the wildlife, but also about the best viewing points and the range of marine attractions to visit.  The three Marine and Wildlife Itineraries provide ideas for great days out along the coastline, giving visitors lots of reasons to spend time here, whether one day, a few days or longer.  In March, the new Area Guide will be launched.

Sea life and a world under water are opening up for youngsters at the Macduff Marine Aquarium.  Weekly sessions that allow toddlers to discover marine wonders are proving to be a hit at Macduff.  The Tots Tuesday adventures allow children to come face-to-face with sea creatures and take part in fun activities.  Children are able to take a journey through the underwater world on trails and treasure hunts to meet lobsters, sharks and jelly-fish.  They can also get their hands on starfish, sea snails and slimy seaweed.  The sessions also include a story-time puppet show which fascinates the young visitors.  Aquarium staff have joined forces with Aberdeenshire's library service to provide exciting stories on watery themes.  Part of the aim is to encourage the enjoyment of books and language at an early age.  The Tots Tuesday sessions from 11.00 to 16.00 will run until the end of March.  Full information is available from the Aquarium on 01261 833369.

The Princess Royal was given a sneak preview (1st March 2012) of a fishing boat which will take part in the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.  Macduff Shipyards are involved in the refurbishment of a replica scaffie herring drifter - called Obair-na-Ghaol - which will sail on the Thames at London this summer as part of a huge pageant to mark the monarch's Jubilee.  It belongs to the Portsoy-based Scottish Traditional Boat Festival group and will represent Banffshire's Lord Lieutenant at the celebrations.

The COAST organisers have won a popular vote for the best festival in the area for 2011.  The charitable body that supports cultural organisations in the North-east, Creative Cultures Scotland, conducted a survey in 2011 to find the best events and projects, as voted by the public, and COAST came out top in the category of festivals.  Representatives from COAST picked up their certificate at a presentation in Aberdeen.  This year's festival will feature performances, exhibitions and entertainments in Banff and Macduff.

Organisers of Banff and Macduff's annual COAST event are planning a huge installation featuring more than 200 custom-made flags.  The piece will take pride of place at Banff Castle.  The theme of the festival is the creative individual, so the organisers are providing more than 200 blank flags that groups will be getting together to decorate.  Locals are being challenged to design a flag that best represents them or their families.  The flags will be fixed to a forest of bamboo canes.  Meanwhile 20 giant flags are being decorated by the same team behind last year's colourful umbrella project.  This year's event runs from 25th to 27th May, starting with an opening ceremony at Macduff Town Hall.