Apologies for the lack of blog updates in the past week- a combination of holidays, a surprisingly busy weekend, a very early start on Monday for WeBS and having the day off yesterday to watch Hurricane Fly in the Champion Hurdle has kept me away from the computer for a while.
We've had a small amount of snow over the past few days, although very little compared to some parts of the North East. The Koniks seem to be coping with the low temperatures much better than the staff are- something to do with the advantage of natural fibres over even the best thermal clothing. The cold weather does seem to have kept the goose numbers low again, with fewer than 10,000 on the reserve for the WeBS count on Monday morning. We've also lost about 2,000 Wigeon, but gained over 200 Goldeneye and around 30 Pochard on the loch. Nothing unusual turned up on Monday, and almost nobody braved the reserve on Saturday and Sunday, but the Bittern is still lurking around Fen Hide and the Desert Wheatear is still hanging on at Rattray Head.
Unfortunately, the snow meant that we had to slightly cut short our planned art workshop on Saturday and Sunday. The Fraserburgh Art Group wisely decided that sketching in a white-out wouldn't be that productive (unless you're Kasimir Malevich) and we settled for a hot drink in the centre and a display of their fantastic Loch of Strathbeg-themed art which they've been working on for the past couple of weeks. They also got to chat to our visiting artist Elinor Grieve and get some advice about drawing and painting wildlife. Hopefully the group will be back in June when it should (should!) be slightly better weather and we can get outside and explore the reserve a bit more. If you're in the Fraserburgh area and fancy getting involved, then the group meet at the Dalrymple Hall at 10am on Wednesdays and anyone with an interest in art (including beginners) is welcome to drop in and join them.
Along with the visit from the art group we also had a fantastic exhibtion of wildlife art from Elinor Grieve http://www.artbyelinor.com/, Karen Hartnell http://karenhartnell-artist.weebly.com/, Kath Hamper, and photographer Cain Scrimgeour http://cainscrimgeour.co.uk/ (some fantastic photos of Troup Head in particular). The artists have generously left their work with us for a little while so we'll have the exhibtion up again this coming weekend. All of the work is for sale and will be available at our Craft Fair on Saturday 6th April.
Hi Karen,
Fingers crossed... We've had blue sky this week so hopefully that'll stay around. It did look great- thanks for sending the pictures over, and I'll let you all know now the weekend goes!
Diana
Fingers crossed more people will pop by to visit this weekend, and the weather will behave itself! It looked a great set-up last weekend from the photos :)
~ Karen ~Pet & Widlife Artist living in southern Perthshire. A self confessed White-Tailed Eagle-holic!