Hello blog land! My name is Tom Simon and I am the current residential intern at the Loch of Strathbeg and this is my first attempt at blogging so we’ll see what happens!
I wasn’t here for the Stargazing event at the weekend but I have heard stories that the attendance was extremely healthy!
Today though has been every good for wildlife sightings which began during our Farmland Bird Survey. There were good numbers of Yellowhammers, Reed Buntings and Greenfinches but the surprise of the survey was 10 Crossbills that flew low and away quite quickly. We also had a Woodcock give a brief fly past earlier in the survey.
After the survey was finished and me, Greig and Ben (2 new residential volunteers) were warming up back in the farmhouse Emma and Lesley (a local volunteer) spotted a Stoat that, save a little brown patch on its head, was in its winter white ermine coat! For someone such as myself who is originally from West Sussex this was a rare sighting and the stoat was very obliging in giving us great views very close underneath the visitor centre windows.
Eventually it disappeared and I remembered that in one of the photo albums in the centre I had seen a photo of stoats peering out of the drainpipe which ran up the wall of the centre. I showed this to Ben who then looked at said drainpipe and our white ermine stoat was right there! It looked around and seemed not to mind us all staring at it and taking as many photos as we could.
The day ended well with the Short-eared Owl of past blog notoriety flying over the farm.
We can only hope the stoat is as viewable again!
You have no idea how many times I tried to take pictures of said stoat in the summer, in exactly that position, but he always ran off, so alas no photo. He's looking amazing in his winter coat!