Summer?We are currently basking in the tropical heat up here at Loch Garten. Our thermometer tells us it’s 29 degrees in the shade right now! So I have retreated into the office to cool down (never thought I’d say that!) and to write my first blog.We’ve had an excited couple of days up here. After keeping us guessing for 4 days EJ and Odin’s third and final chick hatched out at 6.59 last (Tuesday) night. All of us were sitting at the loch have a picnic and a wee celebration for EJ and for Gloria (more about that later) when we got an excited phone call from the volunteers on duty and managed to rush back down to the centre to see our last chick hatch into the world.With three very hungry chicks to feed Odin’s been kept extremely busy bringing in fish whilst EJ periodically feeds them. It’s pretty hot out on the nest at the moment and we can see how EJ stands over the chicks to make sure they are in some shade.We can’t ignore our other proud mum, Gloria the goldeneye, who successfully hatched a brood of ducklings on Monday. Counting her eggs proved pretty difficult as she kept them well covered with down, however it was almost impossible to get an accurate count of lots of jumping, fluffy bodies! It took Laura and myself a good 10 minutes and lots of debate to decide that we have 8 spotty ducklings who were about to launch themselves out their 12 foot high nest box and into the world. Once they were out it was a race down to the loch side to make sure all 8 plus mum got across the road safely and onto the loch. I’m happy to say that they were all seen swimming off across the loch.
As I might have already mentioned, it’s pretty hot up here at the moment! All of a sudden there are a lot of insects crawling and flying around – great news for hungry birds. We get some rare insects on the reserve here including large red damselflies which are now flying around our ponds. The weather has also brought about an increase in activity from swallows and martins (after all those insects) and today we were lucky to get excellent views of a cuckoo calling from out camera tree – really feels like summer has arrived!