The pink-footed geese out on the reserve continue to keep us on our toes this weekend. After estimated counts of around 60,000 on Thursday and Friday, in impromptu dawn count on Sunday only managed to find 17,300 leaving the reserve in the morning. Probably some of these birds have headed south to southern Scotland and through England, but where the others are hiding we don't know! It is getting towards a full moon at the moment, so it's possible a lot of the birds are out feeding early, not returning at night, or using some of the smaller lochs in the surrounding area. We are now getting flocks of 3,000-4,000 roosting on the low ground outside Tower Pool Hide right now though, so if they take off with the sunrise, our early Goosewatches will be pretty spectacular.
We have had good counts of our other winter visitors though with nearly 500 Whooper Swans on the loch and around 300 Barnacle Geese in the surrounding fields. Another nice winter arrival have been three Slavonian Grebe spotted regularly from Fen Hide over the past few days and a Spotted Redshank seen daily from the centre.