The reserve is seeing more lapwing arrive and feed on the fields, a timly reminder that spring is on its way! This time of year we crack on with rush management so that our breeding waders have plenty of feeding ground. We can use a quad bike with a mower...

I currently experiencing some blog related technical issues which mean I can't put photos up and a blog without photos just isn't as good. I'm also struggling to even submit a blog....so I'll keep this short! Today during the farmland birds and winter...

Got to be fast to photograph some of our residents!

On one of the few nice days recently i came across these otter prints on one of the Oa's beaches. The really fresh tracks appeared to show three otters running along side by side. Either that or one doing circuits....

This picture shows some goat...

John Armitage, Islay resident and former RSPB employee, has created an e-petition calling for the licencing of upland grouse moors and gamekeepers, in an attempt to reduce levels of illegal raptor persecution. It was mentioned and linked to by Martin...

With the snow now gone and Spring rapidly approaching, a good chunk of today was spent bringing our main herd of Highland cattle in off the hill in preparation for calving time.

The cows were brought in to our state-of-the-art handling facilities and...

More sn-oa from yesterday and a low winter sun a few days ago

I woke up to stags in the garden, trampling my geraniums...

Then Amy and I went drain blocking...

And then it went all white...

And then two of the local Golden eagles turned up, no doubt looking for small children to snatch. Good day!

 

First hint of sunshine got me out of the office to check the trails. From the Moorland Trail on Loch Gruinart Reserve the view was lovely, looking North to sun-soaked Colonsay, and South to hidden-in-Marks-personal-rain-cloud The Oa. This photo...

1. Friendly cows!

2. Blurry eagles!

3. Views of Ireland!

4. Well ventilated buildings!

5. Great weather!*

*weather permitting

The woodland trail at Loch Gruinart is one of my favourite places to walk and there’s always something to see, even in winter. Right now the snowdrops are coming out in force and daffodil shoots are just showing through the leafless trees. ...

An truly abominable day's weather out here on Islay today, so we move inside for a look behind the scenes at The Oa. The Oa reserve is 2,000+ha of windswept moorland and coastal grassland, with many steep cliffs, deep ditches and bogs to trap the...

Recently Mary and myself have started spying on the local wildlife with the use of the reserve trail camera. We had great results the first two days but the second two gave us nothing but a rat using one of the waterways. (Red deer on the woodland...

Like red deer stags, roe deer males (bucks) grow new antlers every year. Deer antler is the fastest growing animal tissue in the world taking just 5 months to grow. The fastest is the moose which has antlers recorded at growing an inch a day! While...

(Gill, Mary and myself taken by Louise Muir)

Yesterday
I was very lucky to be able to join Gill the RSPB archaeologist as she had a
look around a few of the reserves many sites of interest. It was great to get a
different view of the landscape and find...

WeBS counts (a long running monthly national survey for waterbirds) on The Oa are generally fairly quiet with just a couple of nutrient poor inland lochs counted. Today's count was a bit more interesting than usual, with good numbers of Greenland white...

This is June, a Welsh collie recently brought over from the mainland to join us at The Oa. Gathering sheep here is far from easy, so we need all the help we can get...

Pretty typical Islay weather today, a murky start followed by a biblical downpour at lunchtime and then a glorious late afternoon. Amy and I were out strimming heather on the cliff tops around The Oa in favoured Chough feeding locations, for much the...

If you've ever been to Islay, you'll know that things are different here. They just are. No-one really knows why. For example, it's well known that your mainland rainbows have at their end a big pot of gold and a small Irish fairy in a hat. Out here,...

It may well be the holiday season for us humans, but the sheep and cattle of The Oa don't seem to give a hoot, apparently preferring instead to continue standing in a field and eating it.  So this means two of the reserve staff spend a bracing couple...

That’s me home for Christmas and away from Islay for almost a month, there are no volunteers between now and mid-January so before I left I pulled together a few photos of volunteers and staff doing various work around the reserve. Hopefully if you're...

One of our Luing cows doing a bit of rough grazing in her winter grounds at The Oa reserve yesterday. As I type this with the umpteenth gale of the last fortnight blowing the rain straight through the window frames and waiting for the inevitable power...

One of my highlights of living on Islay is the ferry journey up the Sound of Islay to Port Askaig. There are great views of Jura and the rugged eastern coast of Islay, which comparatively few get to see on foot. It's a good place to try and spot the resident...

Recently James the Senior Site Manager asked Mary and the volunteers to fix up one of Loch Gruinart’s nineteen sluice gates. Some of these gates have the job of diverting water and some hold it back. With these gates James can control the water levels...

Photo by Richard Gibbs