Although it's rainy and miserable today, yesterday (1st Nov) gave me a real sense of the start of winter. The sun was out and the landscape around the reserve was sprinkled with a light dusting of frost. The car was completely frosted over and took a good 15 minutes to deforst before we could start our working day. Although we managed to get the car derfosted I noticed that as the day wore on, some of the frost managed to stay on the grassy verges round the path, where the sun couldnt quite get to it. There was even a small patch of ice on the edge of the water just outside Gullery Hide that remained there all day. And if the weather hadn't convinced me that winter was almost upon us, then the noise coming from the group of around ~250 greylag geese we've had on the loch for most of the week really tells me that it's the biginning of winter. Talking of geese, pink-footed geese skeins fly over-head very regularly and occasionally a few groups of canada geese have stopped to rest on the loch.
The number of wintering wildfowl has also been slowly increasing over the past few weeks; as well as ~200 mallard, ~200 teal, ~40 wigeon, ~ 20 gadwall and ~15 shoveler, there as also been ~50 tufted duck ~10 goosander, ~20 goldeneye on the main body of water. A cormorant has also been seen regularly from East hide.
Flying over-head across the loch are a grey heron, a few buzzards, a kestrel and more recently a merlin - seen by local volunteer, Darell, last weekend.
Along the paths, specifically at the feeders, robins, chaffinch, bullfinch, coal tit, blue tit, great tit and long tailed tits can all be seen - there are more easy to spot now that most of the leaves have fallen from the trees. This also makes it very easy to find a few red squirrels and 2 great spotted woodpeckers. Also seen recently along the paths have been siskin, mistle thrush and redwing.
Disappointly there are no whooper swans at Kinnordy...yet! We are waiting with baited breath for the first group of whoopers to visit. There is still the usual group of mute swans - two family groups with young and another group of around 20 swans. Once the whoopers are at the loch, I'll know it will definitely be winter time then!