Well, firstly despite a nip in the air we've had some stunning views from the reserve this week - pink skies and crispy frozen leaves underfoot.
Our photography volunteer Paul Ashcroft managed to get an excellent shot of the little egret which has been visiting us the past few weeks. The ringing information has come back from BTO and it turns out it was ringed 368 kilometers away in mid-Lincolnshire as a nestling on 20 May 2015, 556 days before it was sighted at Loch Leven. Interestingly this is the very same little egret which visited us on 1 March earlier this year! It's been seen every day this week which is brilliant.
In other news on the reserve our nest box volunteers (Alan, Dave, David and Linda) have been surveying and cleaning out all of the boxes, here is a photo of them hard at work after discovering another successful box. We'll let you know once we have the full report, watch this space.
Our cafe visitors have been hard at work filling the Loch Leven skies with pink footed geese and this beautiful mural is actually quite an accurate representation. The latest goose count figures are in and November's count was a grant total of 9128 pink footed geese.
We've had a juvenile white tailed eagle spotted on St.Serfs island both today and yesterday (they really do love this colder weather). Other sightings highlights include; a brown hare, flocks of fieldfares and redwings on the trees across the road (see mural photo), goldcrests in the wildlife garden and long-tailed tits, tree sparrows and bramblings on the feeders. Over on the wetland trail we've had a few sightings of a pair of stonechats. On the water we've had whooper swans, pintails and shelducks.
As always, let us know what you see and enjoy this beautiful light!
Photo credit: sunset (Karen Caldwell), little egret (Paul Ashcroft), nest box volunteers (Linda Gibson), Mural (Alice O'Rourke)