Apologies for the lack of blog posts this week- partly we've been quite busy catching up on work on the other reserves and planning events for the summer holidays; partly it's continued to be fairly quiet on the reserve, and partly it's been so foggy that we could have had anything on the low ground for much of this week and never managed to see it!
Luckily we've not been as badly affected by heavy rain as many of our reserves in southern England, but it's made spotting anything exciting just that bit more difficult.
One bird that we're getting good sightings of every day now is Osprey. This week we've had at least two different birds on the reserve- male and female. Tom has been determined to catch an osprey on the Hidden Strathbeg camera, and this week he managed to get some brilliant video footage of the female eating a fish and being mobbed by a Herring Gull. You can see a clip of the footage at our Facebook page- www.facebook.com/RSPBNorthEastScotland and you can see the full videos in the visitor centre. This may be the same female who was on the low ground at the beginning of June. If it is, it's a really encouraging sign for the future. Intriguingly the male that we've seen this week has a white colour ring. Despite our best efforts, Tom and I couldn't get close enough to read it on Monday, but we've very kindly been loaned a big lens and camera to take pictures of our ospreys in flight so (once I've worked out how to use it) we should be able to get much better at identifying individual birds.
We're into the second week of summer holidays now so this wee we'll be starting our regular Wild Kids events every Wednesday from 10am-2pm. If you're looking for something to do with your family then head down to the reserve, all the details are on our reserve page at www.rspb.org.uk/lochofstrathbeg or just drop us an email if you'd like any more details. We're pond dipping this weekend and that's always popular so hopefully we'll see some of you there!
I'm also going to be at the Macduff Marine Aquarium every Tuesday from 10am until around 2.30pm, and then weather permitting will be up at Troup Head talking about Gannets, so there's no excuse for not visiting one of our reserves in the next few weeks.