Just a little announcement to let everyone know that the long-awaited waterworks project is slowly reaching its conclusion before the start of our season. This may have some knock-on effects if you are visiting our site at this time.

For those not in the know, we are refurbishing the kiosk building at the entrance to the nature centre to modernise it, add an all-accessibilities bathroom as well as a new welcoming hub. We are also adding a small extension onto the actual nature centre where we will have a public toilet too. This will allow our site to be more user-friendly for visitors who come to Loch Garten. Hooray!

What this means is that for the next two months the site will be inaccessible up towards the centre and possibly some parts of the car park. This is due to construction traffic and making sure the site is secure. It will still be possible to use the car park and our other trails, but we are aware that this will be an inconvenience for those avidly looking for crested tits. I would like to apologise for this inconvenience and hopefully, in time the birds will happily relocate to feed from the car park.

As the extension work is also taking place within view of the feeder camera, we have taken the view to switch this off for the time being to allow the contractors privacy as they work. I know that this will be saddening to some of you due to how keenly you follow the camera, especially in winter. I will be monitoring the project closely and will be turning the camera on again as soon as possible. The extension work takes priority on this project, so I hope the camera will not be off for as long as two months.

 As we become more aware of times and access changes, I will let you know as soon as I become aware of anything. We hope that this project will not run into the start of our season in April but if that is the case you are still welcome to visit. We will have a workaround in place to make sure that if there are ospreys there, you will still be able to see them! As I am sure many of you will be aware that building projects at the moment have been suffering delays and we are keeping our fingers crossed that we will be lucky in finishing this in time. If not, please bear with us as we try to enhance our visitor experience. If you have any questions, then please comment and I will do my best to respond.

Looking forward to seeing the return of people and ospreys in a couple months.