A busy day for the wardens today, putting up some new fencing around the areas being grazed by the Konik ponies. To get the best out of the ponies over the winter, we need to keep them confined on one smallish areas of the marsh at any one time. This way they'll heavily graze the juncus and grass giving us the nice low lawns that we want for our breeding waders. Once we've got that, we can shift the fencing along and…

It was November's monthly Wetland Bird Survey today, so the wardens and vols were out early (well, early for most people on a Sunday! One benefit of the days getting shorter is that WeBS doesn't start until almost 7am) to count geese and ducks on the reserve. The slightly later start and the sheer number of wintering wildfowl  made it an even longer morning than usual!

The Pink-Footed Goose count was our highest…

Just to let you know that due to work down at HQ, we won't have access to any of our emails over the weekend (we're not just ignoring you, we promise!)

If you need to get in touch with us then give us a ring on 01346 532017, leave a comment on the blog or forum, or follow our Twitter on www.twitter.com/RSPB_NEScot

A busy couple of days on the reserve. Firstly on Tuesday we had a visit from a team from our Orkney reserves, down on the mainland for a few days for the regional meeting, and to have a look at our Konik ponies.Some of the Orkney reserves need grazing, and this was a good chance for the Orkney team to see what a difference our ponies are making to the habitat and to have a chat about how we're looking after them out on…

With Saturday morning the final Goosewatch of the season (the geese are still around- but now the big numbers have moved through that was the last of the organised watches) it's back to the regular task of trying to get our year list up to 200 species or more for the year. With the jury still out on whether we can count the short-staying White Tailed Eagle (we think yes, Dominic thinks no, we've reminded him that he doesn…

It’s been another busy and varied week on the reserve, with the next stage of preparation work for our konik ponies’ corral construction underway, and a visit from special avian guest on Wednesday.

 Gorse burning and some final bashing has been the week’s big task to clear suitable land for the corral. The wet weather didn’t dampen our fires, and with the gorse burnt we worked hard to put in some gateposts…

As you've probably seen on the news tonight, we very nearly had a white-tailed eagle taking to the skies at Strathbeg today.

An Irish White-Tailed Eagle, reintroduced from Norway in 2010 was found stranded in a cove near Pennan at the end of last week. A quick rescue by our East Coast Sea Eagle officer Rhian saw the bird safely in the care of a local vet, the bird had recovered from its exhaustion, and Rhain decided…

Definitely the highlight of today- bird number 197 on the year list- 3 bearded tits seen by Emma from Fen Hide. It's a bird we're both very familiar with after each spending the summer at Titchwell Marsh but they're a barely annual visitor this far north. One of our regulars has mentioned seeing possible bearded tits last weekend as well, so it's possible they could be hanging around for a while. They're quite hard to…

Our penultimate Saturday Goosewatch this morning, and again the geese gave us a great display. Several large flocks have been roosting on the loch and lagoon and this morning the majority of them moved over to the low ground in front of Tower Pool Hide before leaving the reserve, so we got to see one flock leave, another arrive and then that flock leave soon afterwards. The constantly shifting skeins make fantastic viewing…

A bit of a surprise on the reserve to day in the form of a very unexpected avocet spotted on the low ground this morning. While we do get records of avocet on the reserve and it's on the yearlist after the two we had in the spring, to get them at this time of year is very rare indeed. Our only other non-spring record was the first ever for the reserve, seen by one of our regulars in January of 1986. We only got brief…

Dear All,

As many of you will already know I have been the long term residential volunteer at loch of strathbeg this summer, but this weekend was my last and I am now back home in Leeds.

I just wanted to pop in and say a massive thank you to Dominic, Vicky, Emma and Diana, the Field Teachers, the local volunteers, all the short term volunteers that lived with me over the summer and the visitors that have made my summer…

We've managed to get through our first weekend without Dominic's guiding hand without too much going horribly wrong (the visitor centre was still standing when I left at 5 this afternoon anyway...). Although the birding has been reltively quiet we did have a brief reappearance of the Rough-legged Buzzard early Saturday afternoon and a lovely fly-past from the Hen Harrier on the Saturday evening Goosewatch.

With…

Well the time has come to hang up my wellies (well throw them out really as they are a bit past it) and move on.

It has been privileged to be part of a superb team of staff and volunteers both past and present, for all your hard work and tolerance I thank you most sincerely– any reserve is only as good as the team that manages it and in my completely unbiased opinion the Grampian reserves are the best in Scotland and…

The weather this morning left a fair bit to be desired unless you like going out searching for migrants that is. With the winds over the last few days having a degree of easterly in them combined with the rainfall the plantation was calling very loudly indeed - and it did not disappoint!

The undoubted highlight was the single wood warbler that showed reasonably well to all of us ( a year tick and only the second reserve…

Another fully-booked dawn Goosewatch on Saturday kicked the weekend off well. The majority of geese have been on the low ground, so once it was light enough to check their location we walked out to Tower Pool Hide The geese are still making us wait for a while before lifting off, but the sight of several thousand lifting off right in front of the hide is still definitely worth the wait. The Whooper Swans kept us entertained…

After another fantastic (if very, very cold- we think the Pinkies may have been warmer if they'd stayed in Iceland!) dusk Goosewatch last night, we've decided to reschedule the Goosewatch next Wednesday 26th from  6.45am (Dawn) to 5pm (Dusk).

We've had lots of demand for our dusk watches and we hope this one will be just as popular. If you'd like to book on the extra dusk watch then give us a ring on 01346 532234…

A quick trip out on the reserve today to see how the Konik ponies are doing. The eight ponies have now been out on the reserve for six months and they're already having a fantastic effect on the habitat outin the wet area around the loch. Lots of the juncus reed has been grazed away in big patches, leaving open 'lawns' which will be ideal for breeding snipe and other waders in the spring. The ponies are also churning…

Those of you watching the year list over the past two weeks or so will have noticed that our summer volunteer Cain has been back on the reserve. This time round he's been spending time out on the reserve filming the pink-footed geese at their roosts and feeding spots. The really good news is that some of that footage has been picked up by BBC AutumnWatch and should be shown at the beginning of the show tomorrow night…

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…

....especially after yesterday and this morning. I take it back, even though mushrooms are very interesting, there was no beating the geese spectacle of the last two mornings. We believe there were at least 60,000 geese leaving the loch yesterday morning, of which the majority went south. Then this morning several volunteers and staff congregated at 6.30am to see just how many geese we had roosting on the pools in front…

Another early start again this morning as we tried again to count the geese roosting on the reserve. The weather was much more helpful today with the cloud staying much higher so we could actually see where at least some of the geese were flying! The goose roost seems to be split between several thousand on the loch and an almost equal number actually roosting on the beach. While the loch birds eventually behaved and…

With the weather this morning (and afternoon) and the slightly strange behaviour of the geese over the past few days, we were a bit worried about our first Goosewatch of the season.We needn't have been concerned at all. In a change from Goosewatches in previous years we decided to head to the south end of the loch, where Emma and I have had big numbers of incoming geese in recent nights.

We were then treated to…

I am sure that Diana will update later with how well our goose fair has gone but after the build up of the last couple fo days our first Icelandic Goose Census was a wash out. It started off normally enough with geese moving around in the twilight of dawn and we were settling in for what could be a long morning waiting for them to move off. The weather though had different ideas and by 0830 this morning we called it off…

It really is a day full of geese tomorrow. We've got an early morning grey goose count (I say we, I'm being excused this week as I'm staying on late, but the wardens and volunteers have an early morning), Goosefair from midday-4pm in the afternoon and our first dusk Goosewatch from 5.30pm. We've still got a few spaces on Goosewatch so if you're coming to Goosefair then make sure you come and see us to book when you arrive…

At the reserve we have one major topic of conversation at the moment and that it the geese and it's understandable why when there are thousands of them but they aren't the only things to see. We have 28 whooper swans on the loch, 100's of wildfowl, large numbers of lapwing and golden plover plus several greenshank and  30+ ruff. Not to mention that the very fair weather of late is bringing out lots of dragonflies…