With most of our passing waders on their breeding grounds and birds of prey being a little scarce, it's been all about the ducks at Strathbeg this weekend. The best find has been a lovely drake American Wigeon. It was spotted by Vicky earlier in the week and today has been in with the larger European Wigeon flock on the low ground. with a greenish head and very obviously creamy-white head stripe, it's fairly easy to pick out, although if it's tail on to you it can be easily overlooked. It may well be the same drake that visited at around this time last year, as they often return to the same spot several years running. We're still trying to decide if it's new for the year list- there were reports of one earlier on in the year, but unfortunately some of those records were of a decoy duck on a nearby flight pond rather than a genuine vagrant...
The second-best duck of the day was a super drake Garganey. The picture below of a duck and drake was taken from the visitor centre a few years ago but it shows the brown and grey drake with its white eyestripe. Garganey are the only duck that migrates from Scotland to Africa, and winters in places like Senegal. We see one or two at Strathbeg every year, and they may even have bred here but they're small and secretive and very hard to spot out on such a large reserve.
Our final duck highlight was our second brood of Shelduck out on the low ground. The pair had five ducklings and hopefully will be able to keep a few of them safe.
Those of you checking our Facebook page will have seen our latest 'sneak peek' Hidden Strathbeg video- if not then go to www.facebook.com/RSPBNorthEastScotland for a new clip, or come into the centre to see full length clips of lots of different wildlife that you may not have seen in the flesh at Strathbeg before.
Finally, a quick plug for one of our other reserves- for the next three Mondays we'll be running RSPB guided boat trips to RSPB Fowlsheugh from Stonehaven harbour on the MV Lady Gail II. This is the boat we used for our full colony count and we had an amazing time, seeing the seabird cliffs from a whole new angle. There are photos on the Facebook page above which will give you an idea of the great views we had on the day. If you'd like to book on one of the trips them contact Ruari at www.castlecharters.co.uk or call him on 0741 1010559 (you may have to leave a message and he'll call you back).