Birnie Loch
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Birnie Loch is located in NE Fife, Scotland, adjacent to the crossroads between the A91 and B937 roads. It is entirely artificial in nature, being a flooded pit formerly used for the extraction of sand or gravel.
The extraction company decided to present the exhausted flooded pit to the local authority as a potential public resource. A competition was held to name it, and the name Birnie Loch was proposed by a local schoolgirl.
This piece of water was the first in a series of such in the immediate vicinity to be so presented to the community, and the (younger) neighbouring Gadden Lochs have become a wildfowl preserve, complete with an observation hut for birdwatchers. Birnie Loch is also a preserve, but public access to the banks is not fenced off as it is for most of the neighbouring waters for the benefit of breeding birds.
It has now matured into a small loch of albeit semi-cultivated appearance, and has been colonised by many varieties of wildlife including birds, fish, invertebrates, and water-loving plants of many sorts.
This is an original piece by a semiregular visitor to Birnie Loch, so no sources are available for citing.
