Living on the reserve it is easy to become a little blasé about some of the wildlife we have around here. Pink-footed Goose? Sure, over there by the other ten thousand Pink-footed Geese. Whooper Swans? 300 this morning. American Wigeon? Green-winged Teal? Two a penny. Old hat. Six weeks ago I hadn’t seen any of these birds before in my life. Ditto Otter, Tree Sparrow, Woodcock, Long-tailed Duck, Slavonian Grebe, Brambling…

After a wet and fairly quiet weekend on the reserve we were all ready for a bit of excitment this morning, and we thought we'd hit the jackpot when Andrew spotted a small, very white goose with dark wingtips out on the low ground. The first thought was that this could be a Snow Goose- a rare visitor from further north which occasionally migrates south with flocks of Greylags or Pink-feet. Strathbeg used to be a pretty…

Things got off to a brisk start this week, with a brief Black-throated Diver out on the loch. A Green-winged Teal has also joined our now apparently resident American Wigeon. Bonus points for anyone who can pick out another Yank – Ring-necked Duck, maybe? The records show that wildfowl-wise anything is possible at this time of year.

Moving away from the scarcer birds, the big events of the week have come from some…

Big news for me this week – I’ve just seen my hundredth species at Strathbeg. Any guesses for what it was? Slavonian Grebe? American Wigeon? Nah. It was, in fact, a Woodcock. (American Wigeon got in at 94, and the grebe was way down at 68).

Woodcocks are cracking things, and a species that I’ve been trying to catch up with for several years. It was also the highlight of our weekly survey of the farmland birds…

Two early mornings in a row this weekend, with our final Dawn Goosewatch of the season on Saturday and a full Wetland Birds Survey (WeBS count) today.

I'd love to say the geese gave us a suitably impressive finale on Saturday but, if we're honest, they hadn't read the script and, as dawn broke, clearly had no intention at all of taking to the air. If we're very honest, they were still quite a few on the low ground at…

Happy Friday folks and welcome to the end of another week,

Saturday afternoon was the perfect chance for a wee jaunt to the beach and fabled lagoon, hotspot for the occasional migrant,  vagrant or in this case a Sandwich Tern who had evidently missed the boat south to warmer climes.  Still the Long Tailed Duck has stuck around too and two's company.

Mondays hide checks were especially good for ducks. 4 Pintail could…

You've not had to go far to get some fantastic wildlife at Strathbeg over the past few days. The garden has been absolutely alive with small birds and this morning I counted 14 different species on the (very short!) walk between the office and the visitor centre.

So the quiz question for the week is- can anyone name all 14? There are quite a few possibles so it'll be interesting to see if anyone can get the right…

Good afternoon all, welcome back to the highlight of everyones week! 

The week got off to a promising start with Sundays sighting of a Bittern visible from Fen and Bay hides. Despite Monday mornings "hide checks" becoming a sneaky Bittern spying session for myself and Andrew, alas we were unable to catch a glimpse of the elusive creature. Still, I'm sure he's out there...somewhere. 

The past few days haven…

As you can tell from the recent flurry of blog posts- the start of the week mostly involved making sure Iain and Andrew were up to date with all our ‘social media outlets’ (terrible phrase!) and making sure they were all signed up to do blog posts, add stuff to our Facebook and post on Twitter. Thankfully they’ve fully grasped the technology (and partly grasped Twitter...) so they’ll be helping me…

With the departure of our regular sightings blogger Tom the call went out for someone daft enough to pick up where he left off. So here goes.

Whilst last week’s weather remained cold and wet there was the added excitement of some high winds at night and so a trip to the plantation was inevitable. Just a single Goldcrest was heard this time with his pals a Blue Tit and a Blackbird. Not the most fruitful of expeditions…

Hello folks, just joined the community so I thought I would introduce myself. You might know me from the stolen robin saga, I was the angry looking guy in the left of the picture in the paper. I will be working as a winter volunteer at Loch of Strathbeg until the end of March. My birding skills are getting much better and it's great to be getting stuck in with things around the reserve.

I look forward to seeing you…

First icy day of winter yesterday, so I celebrated by getting cold while taking pictures of birds that looked pretty chilly themselves. I was surprised to find that the morning light gave everything a sepia hue. Here's a Greenfinch looking like he was photographed in the 1920s.

Winter photography lesson number one. Wear gloves.

For us volunteers weekends on the reserve are a civilised affair. Along with plenty of…

A very cold weekend has made it really seem like winter on the reserve, and today that was pretty much confirmed with the appearance of some of our classic winter visitors. I was feeling quite pleased by my sightings of a flock of Long-tailed Tits and a great fifteen minutes watching a Stoat hunt outside the centre, but that was very much overshadowed by sightings down on the loch. There was a female Scaup and Common…

Second blog post from Andrew, our long-term volunteer-

This being the 21^st century the records system here at the RSPB is computerised. This means spending a fair amount of time sticking bird names, dates and locations into an enormous database, from which we can find out a huge amount of important scientific, um, stuff.

One of the quirks of the system is that when you type in the common, English name for a bird, the…

(A preview of my poster summerising my time here.)

Hello Blogland for one last time from Loch of Strathbeg!

I'm leaving the Grampian Reserves team to return back to the south coast.

My last day was nice and the weekly hide checks gave me a good opportunity to see the whole reserve for one last time.

And then a final look at the Starnafin 2012 Kitchen Window List which is currently on 68. The Greater Warburton…

A week that start of with a period forecast to have 1 mile an hour winds blowing never really promised a big influx of juicy migrants and despite Waxings turning up in other parts of Aberdeenshire they haven't found their way here yet.

Our Goosewatch audiences have been treated to some good lifts as of late and even when we haven't been having a Goosewatch event we still enjoy the combine 'boom' as they take off…

Andrew, one of our new long-term volunteers, writes his first blog post on a slightly uncomfortable day out with the Koniks...

Out an about on the reserve, some of the workforce has been exhibiting some slightly peculiar behaviour. For the last week or so the guys here have been seen shuddering, shaking their heads sadly and muttering things like ‘poor Dudley. Dear, sweet Dudley.’ Those of the fairer sex, it has to be…

We've been in the news a couple of times this week for a couple of very different reasons! Firstly, and most disappointingly, our Robin collection box was stolen and vandalised at the beginning of the week. We think he was stolen on Sunday night, and Emma found him on Tuesday evening dumped in a ditch at the top end of the reserve. The Robin was locked to prevent people opening it, so the thieves had sawn the entire base…

After last weeks excitement of the Ring Ouzel, Lapland Bunting and Firecrest our trip to the Plantation did have a after the Lord Mayors show feel about it and this was reflected in what we found.

A solitary female Blackcap is still there from last week, with good number of Robins and also a few Goldcrest.

After that we went to the Lagoon and found 8 Redshank working their way up into the Lagoon, 4 Grey Plover at the…

Two early mornings for us this weekend- the first of our Dawn Goosewatches on Saturday and an early Wetland Birds Survey (WeBS) and goose count this morning.

Despite a few people being put off by the forecast, we had a great start to our first Goosewatch. With not too many geese on the pools, as soon as it was light we headed down to Tower Pool Hide and the geese obliged with flocks a couple of thousand strong lifting…

Would you like to spend your week getting local people and communities to be inspired by nature? Interested in encouraging more people to visit Loch of Strathbeg? Perhaps you just fancy writing this blog once a week?

We're working with The Conservation Volunteers (the old BTCV) to employ a Natural Communities Trainee Community Ranger to work at Strathbeg for 2013. It sounds like a long and complicated title but basically…

Don't get too excited just yet-

Unfortunately the roller in question,has decided that flattening pot holes is bit too much like hard work (the wardens know just how it feels!) and has broken down just past the start of the entrance track. It is just possible to get a car past by driving a bit on the verge, but it's not recommended if you've got a large car or low ground clearance as the verge itself is quite steep…

A good week here with the Greater Yellowlegs hanging around here until Sunday but as has so often been proven with this bird, it can still come back.

Red-A, our favourite White-tailed Eagle, is still here and I’m watching very keenly to see if he has a favourite post for bugging purposes!

Other than that, a visitor did report that the 2 Buff-breasted Sandpipers were still here today. There are many Ruff here…

Quite a busy day on the reserve today as the Aberdeen local group can to do some management work, cutting scrub, clearing willows and gorse around Bay Hide and making a fairly impressive fire on the loch shore to burn the cuttings. Typical that the day we're building a fire is one of the warmest days we've had in the whole of September! We really appreciate the work the local group have done on the reserve recently. They…

Greater Yellowlegs is back, Red-breasted Flycatcher, Pied Flycatcher, Yellow-browed Warbler, Redstart, many Goldcrests, Brambling, Short-eared Owl, Barnacle Geese, White-tailed Eagle, Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Pectoral Sandpiper, Curlew Sandpiper, Ruff, Grey Plover, Whooper Swans & a Sabine's Gull?!?!?!?!?!

The Greater Yellowlegs-shaped hole has been filled as the Golden Welly winning wader has returned to the Loch…