Today we were lucky enough to have two fishing specialists on the reserve, a pair of ospreys. The first bird dived into one of our scrapes and flew out with a fish, it then ate its well earned dinner on the wall that runs down the wetland. Whilst I was in the wild flower meadow, less than an hour ago, another osprey was flying over the loch towards Kinnross. There was also a buzzard using the same wall as the osprey, along with another bird hunting on St Serfs island. Apart from the wonderful raptors, there are some mallard, tufted duck, gadwall, three little grebes and a small flock of curlews on the flood. On Loch Leven the number of ducks have definitely dropped from last week. though there are still plenty of tufted duck, pochard, gadwall and great crested grebes. At our bird feeders we have our usual selection of tits and finches, along with an increasingly regular yellow hammer.
Our willow warblers, up Vane Hill, are still singing loudly along with the surprisingly loud call of thousands of grass hoppers. When I was walking throught the woodland a bright linnet was perched on one of the higher branches of a birch tree. In our wild flower meadows there are many species of butterfly including meadow brown, ringlet, green veined, small white and small tortise shell. Next to our teaching hide we have two ponds and today I decided to take a closer look in them, I was shocked by how much I found, from caddis fly larvae to young frogs.
Check the blog next week to find out what turns up at vane!
COMMON FROG