Another brilliant week at RSPB Scotland Loch Leven. We've had a white tailed eagle sighted on St.Serfs island on Sunday and again on Tuesday, both times visible from the telescopes in the cafe. Most of the radio trackers which were fitted as part of the reintroduction programme have run out of steam (as expected) which does make it all the more challenging to confirm the identity of individual birds. If you manage to get a view of a wing tag or a photo please get in touch with the reserve. Turquoise "H" is a likely suspect but watch this space.
Another exciting visitor was a little egret which has also been seen on three different days. Linda, one of our volunteers, manged to get a nice picture which clearly shows a red left leg ring and a yellow right leg ring which is the same tagging as the little egret we had visiting on March this year which was originally ringed at North Cotes in Lincolnshire, perhaps this is the same one, we'll let you know when we hear back from BTO. If you would like to find out about bird ringing we have our annual demo here as part of the Big Garden Birdwatch on Sat 28 Jan - pop the date in your diary.
In other news, we managed to miss the early morning storms on Wednesday morning on our final dawn goose watch event. The November coordinated goose count will be next Wednesday so we'll keep you posted with the latest figures when we have them. It's been a good year with regular morning lift-offs and geese returning most afternoons from 3pm. If you want to learn the best spots or any other geese information just drop into the visitor centre.
Other sightings for the week include many many red squirrels, this week we had a maximum of three in their usual playground by the picnic area and into the leafy loop. On the cafe feeders we've had lots of goldfinches, tree sparrows and great spotted woodpeckers.
Over on the wetlands we've had sightings of five male shovelers, big groups of teals, wigeons, snipe, twenty-seven whooper swans, curlews, moor hens and today a stonechat on the path between the Waterston and Carden hides.
Photo credits: little egret - Linda Gibson, woodpeckers - RSPB Loch Leven archive, shovelers - Paul Ashcroft