While Lewis is enjoying a well deserved Saturday off, I thought I'd take the opportunity to write my very first Vane Farm blog!
It's been a stunning autumn day here at Loch Leven, as I was driving towards the reserve this morning the fog was thick and the mist was hanging low, hiding the tops of the hills. The water on the loch has been perfectly still all day, except for the trails and splashes of the incoming birds. Whooper swans have been making a splash and a racket, their bugling calls greeting visitors as soon as they get out of their cars in the car park. There were around 60 in and around the bay today, including lots of juveniles, my favourites!
The latest goose count on Wednesday saw our numbers of pink footed geese rise again to 14, 519. At least 500 were hanging around Vane Bay all day today and dotted amongst them was the odd greylag goose, including one leucistic greylag. Leucism (some of you might have heard about this on autumnwatch recently!) is a genetic mutation that causes reduced pigmentation, so a birds' feathers often appear paler or more washed out than usual. In this case, the goose still had its bright orange beak and legs, but creamy coloured feathers instead of the normal grey-brown.
We still have a couple of hundred teal, along with increasing numbers of wigeon and goldeneye. Flocks of 50+ each of lapwing and curlew were moving back and forth from the muddy scrapes infront of the second hide, while a few shelduck and pintail were playing hide and seek along the edge of the bay.
The bird of the day award has to go to one black tailed godwit though! This will almost certainly be an Icelandic bird which, like most of the other birds around Loch Leven at the moment, has come here to overwinter in the UK. Here's a pic for you!
My job here at Vane is to organise our events programme and to make sure that our visitors have a great time, so I spent this afternoon as a 'Guide in the Hide' - being onhand for visitors in the Gillman hide, helping to point out what was about on the loch and showing them all the different birds through our telescopes. So if you don't know your mallards from your moorhens, we'll be there every Saturday in November from 1.30 - 3.30pm, come and see us!
Other events coming up include our Winter Survival kids event tomorrow, where we'll be making hibernation hotels and bird feeders to take home. Spaces are still available, give us a call if you'd like to join in..
This week also sees Great Goose Week the second! As goose numbers are at a peak again we have 3 more goose roost events for you - dusk watches tomorrow & Thursday, and an early morning walk on Tuesday. Check out the events section for more details.