October saw the arrival of many of our winter visitors and as November progresses we have had fantastic sightings of geese and other wildfowl. Today saw the largest number of Greylag geese so far with 500 counted on the Loch this morning, with a Barnacle goose and 3 White fronted mixed in for good measure. The geese have been doing a great job at trampling down the over grown bog bean vegetation on the islands in front of the Gullery hide, the flattened remnants of vegetation mean that we can now see all of the many other birds out on the water and on the islands much more easily. Other geese sighted recently also include: Canada, Bar-headed and Pink-footed.
The Teal are back in good numbers steadily increasing each day well into the hundreds, and numbers of Goldeneye, Goosander, Wigeon and Tufted Duck are also up. We had 7 Whooper swans last week creating quite a stir among the resident Mutes and 2 Cormorants have been sighted regularly fishing on the Loch also; add to this a a wonderful mix of woodland birds around the water's edge such as Tree creeper, Siskin and Buzzards and you really can have a great day's birdwatching at the reserve.
On a more unusual note we had a very special sighting today at Egromoss - whilst walking over the heathland we came across 2 Short-eared Owls that flew up right in front of us and continued to fly low over the heathland. This is the first time these owls have been sighted here so hopefully they will stick around for a while. There were also 3 Snipe on the Loch yesterday another surprise at this time of year and very well hidden amongst all the Geese and Teal. Some sizeable roosts have made excellent end of day spectacles recently, over 100 Starlings were present on 7th Nov, what a fantastic aerial display that was!
A lovely accompaniment to all the birds has been the fantastic little Red Squirrels dashing around from tree to tree all over the place, we saw 3 today alone!