It's been the time of year and the type of weather where anything could turn up at Strathbeg, and we've spent the past few days playing hide and seek with all sorts of passing wildlife from very tiny to impossibly huge!

The biggest (in every sense) wildlife hunt was today when one of our regular visitors rang to say she'd spotted a Humback Whale breaching just off Peterhead, and it was heading north! Richard…

26,208 Pink-footed Geese, 61 Whooper Swan, 1 White-tailed Eagle, 1 Golden Wellie and more!

Picture of just a few geese taken on this morning's dawn goose count- how many do you make it! (DS)

The more is that the Buff-breasted Sandpiper and Pectoral Sandpipers are still here! There is a general consensus that one of the Buff-breasted Sandpipers that was here at the weekend has now gone but one remains. I went out…

Two very different days this weekend- wonderfully warm and sunny on Saturday followed by rain and a bit of westerly wind today. As often happens, the bad weather bought the best birds down on the reserve. Firstly James our new volunteer saw some small waders out on the Low Ground, a long look through a couple of scopes and we identified them as Pectoral Sandpipers. These are normally seen in North America and are rare…

5,000 Pink-footed Geese and 2 Light-bellied Brent Geese, but one with a story?

Well, the geese are back with a vengeance and are now on the Low Ground in big numbers. They have grown to around 5,000 in total but there could be more in the dunes.

The second WEBs of the season was this morning which showed that there were many Goldeneye and Tufted Ducks on the loch and even a total of 9 Great-crested Grebes.

Myself…

After a few days of superb weather there was a definite nip in the air by late afternoon today. The good news is that the calm windless weekend has bought with it a bit arrival of Pink-footed Geese. Saturday especially saw at least 800 geese on the reserve, many of them flying in from the sea. This means that Strathbeg is probably the first land they’ve seen since leaving Iceland, and they all seemed very eager to drop…

The wader passage of the recent weeks has continued with a Pectoral Sandpiper, Curlew Sandpiper, Wood Sandpiper, 4 Greenshank, 1 Redshank, 1 Black-tailed Godwit and a collection of Lapwing hanging around on the pools today and during the week.

There are also families of Pied Wagtails around on the pools as well and the 6 Tufted Duck which has been seen in recent weeks have avoided the Otters and so far and are still…

A slightly busier day than usual on the reserve as we hosted the launch of a new website to promote travel and tourism across the region. The Grampian coastal partnership have put together a site highlighting all the various accommodation, activities and wildlife across the area from Fraserburgh to Fowlsheugh, including Loch of Strathbeg. You can have a look at the new site here- http://greentourism.egcp.org.uk/ 

Typically…

The number of waders around the reserve remains impressive at the moment including 4 greenshank, 2 wood sandpiper, 10 snipe and pectoral sandpiper all on Starnafin pools this morning.

In the past few days we’ve also had spotted redshank, little stint, ruff, curlew and dunlin on the pools and low ground.

A walk on the beach at Rattray last night saw a good selection of waders on the shoreline, typically I…

After the wardens and volunteers suffered in the rain on Friday, it's actually been an incredibly warm and sunny weekend. The weather hasn't reduced our wader numbers at all, and the lagoon is still home to hundreds of small and medium-sized waders including Knot, Sanderling, Redshank, Dunlin, Ringled Plover, Curlew, 3 Spotted Redshank and a single Pectoral Sandpiper. There's a good number of juveniles, and most of the…

This morning staff and volunteers were out on the reserve for the August Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS). The weather wasn’t at its best (I'm sure it's meant to be summer!) and we all returned ever so slightly wet, but with a good list of sightings!

After adding up the totals there are some pretty impressive numbers of waders around the reserve including 6 greenshank, 13 ruff, 22 Dunlin, 20 redshank, 10 little…

After 2 weeks at Loch Garten on Osprey duty it's nice to be back and see a few waders again!

You'd be doing well to miss a Greenshank at the moment. It feels like every time I go outside I hear one flying over.

The peak count last week was 19!

Lapwing numbers are healthy now and good number are on the pools just outside the visitors centre and there have been one or two Ruff around too.

Willow Warblers are…

It's been another busy week on and around Loch of Strathbeg. Myself, Emma and Richard spent Sunday and Monday at Turriff Show, handing out our brand new reserve leaflets, answering wildife questions and hopefully encouraging people to visit their local reserves. The wardens and volunteers have mostly been out on the reserve with the Koniks, putting up some new fences and moving some of the herd to a slightly different…

We've done lots of pond-dipping this year at Strathbeg (you can go pond-dipping any time you visit- just ask us for a pond-dipping kit) but today we decided to try something a little bit different.

Our band of Wild Kids headed out onto the reserve to 'dip' the cut stream (the outflow of the loch) and the saltwater lagoon. Dipping in the pond usually involves standing on the edge and making sure you don't end up in…

Ok...they’re not real elephants and tigers, but the warmer weather this week has resulted in a an excellent few nights moth trapping, including these amazing garden tiger moths and elephant hawkmoth...

The un-summer like weather conditions that we’ve had up here in recent months has meant that the trap hasn’t been out as often as we would like and only caught very small numbers when it did get put out. So opening…

Sorry for the lack of blogs this week, we've been out and about a bit, myself at New Deer show, Emma making visits up to Troup and Tom leaving us for two weeks secondment to the Osprey centre at Loch Garten.

Obviously the big news of the week has been the reappearance of white-tailed eagle Red A. He was spotted by Vicky late on Wednesday afternoon, flying over the low ground. Myself, Emma, Tom and our two volunteers…

ETA Just after this was posted Vicky went down to Tower Pool Hide and amazingly, spotted Red A- the White-tailed Eagle that visited the reserve in April. He then moved to the lagoon and finally settled in the dunes just near the plantations. Will update you if he's about tomorrow- check www.twitter.com/RSPB_NEScot for the latest news.

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Although we've had nothing like the amount of rain that has been falling on…

 (Marsh Orchid).

Well, I haven’t really been here much this week after having a few days down south and finishing off my Kittiwake monitoring at Fowlsheugh (for those interested there are still a few Puffins hanging around by the shelter and also a Great Skua) and I was under the impression that wasn’t a great variety of things here. It seems that I had missed a few good sightings. I’ve seen an Osprey most days around…

Now the holidays have started I get to stop spending so much time in the office and instead get to spend every Wednesday doing fun things like Pond Dipping and hunting for butterflies in the dunes. We generally encourage a few families to come along as well so it's not just us having all the fun!

Our Wild Kids events started today with a mammoth four hour pond dip, with a small break for a walk to Tower Pool Hide…

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…

We've had some great otter sightings in the evenings and early mornings recently, although the time of day meant that they've mostly been seen just by staff and volunteers. However at about lunchtime today, the few remaining Black-headed Gulls on the island in front of the visitor centre started to alarm call and began flapping and diving at a patch of grass on the edge of the island. All the visitors in the fairly busy…

A relatively quiet week here at Strathbeg, not least because people have either been moving house/on holiday but also 2 residential volunteers have left us.

Ben had been here since the end of January and worked very hard all the time he was here and even got us all out to the pub a few times!

Ian was here for 3 weeks and we wish him all the best of luck for finding a Greater Yellowlegs, as ours left on the weekend he…

It's been another fairly quite week at Loch of Strathbeg, not helped by days like today where the fog was so thick you could barely have seen the visitor centre let alone anything outside it!

The unusal quiet around the centre is also down to the island being almost emptied of Black-headed Gulls and Common Terns. It would have been a difficult season for them to raise chick anyway but the Otters that Cain blogged…

Not the best weekend to be out and about and, unfortunately, the rain meant a low turnout at both of our weekend events- at Haddo Country Park for BioBlitz on Saturday and at Portsoy for the Scottish Traditional Boat Festival in Sunday. Hopefully everyone who did come had a good time- we showed a lot of people the new Hidden Strathbeg videos (via slightly unhelpful Netbook!) and definitely encouraged a few families to…

It's not felt much like the middle of summer for the past few days- the weather's been mixed to say the least! It was clear enough on the solstice night itself, and Ian our current short-term volunteer was able to take this shot of the reserve at midnight on the longest day.

The weather has kept most of the small songbirds very quiet, and we've been fairly quiet for passing waders as well. There are still some…

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…