The Loons Hide

Today was the first of this seasons hide 'Surgery Sessions' at The Loons reserve. These sessions will run every Friday from now until the end of July, and then fortnighly into the autumn, at one of these Orkney reserve hides:The Loons, Burgar Hill and Mill Dam. We'll be posting about events here on the blog but you can also find out more on the events section of the Orkney web page.

As it was the first event of the season we expected it to be fairly quiet, however, when we arrived there were visitors already in the hide! Through the course of the morning (9:30 to 12:30) there were eight visitors, a number of them having heard about the event on Radio Orkney that morning. We manged to get two mentions in their 'Daily Diary' of whats on in Orkney, as the wrong day was originally read out and then corrected. A result for us! 

The Loons and its neighbouring reserve Loch of Banks are two great examples of Orkney's wetlands. The hide at The Loons looks immediately over a pool, then further over towards the wetland and the Loch of Isbister. There is also and area of reedbed.  

The morning was a bit cold and driech (as you can see from the picture below) but the birds didn't let us down. The sound of displaying birds filled the hide with bubbling curlews, wheesy lapwings and drumming snipe - providing the constant backdrop to the mornings events. The curlews were scraping nests,  the lapwings were trying to impress with their flip flapping flight and there were hares boxing in the background. The mute swan pair were displaying, elegantly dipping their heads to each other, not quite mirroring each others movements, occasionally recreating the classic love heart pose. The black headed gulls were also displaying but in a slightly less elegant manner than the swans! Spring has definately sprung!

There were also plenty of ducks to be seen, the humble mallards, a pair of tufted duck (who stayed for the whole morning on the pool), a pair of gadwall briefly dropped in, as did  three drake shoveler ducks. Teal and wigeon were also easily spotted. However, the star of the show was the drake pintail who graced us with his presence for a short while. 

It wasn't all about the joys of spring though, winter is still here in the form of geese, plenty of which were visible from the hide this morning. There is a small flock of Greenland white-fronted geese which winters in Orkney and are normally found in the vacinity of The Loons. They haven't been seen much this winter, so it was great to see a flock of 53 of them in a neighbouring field. The field was also playing host to a small group of pink-footed geese. There are often a few to be found in Orkney over the winter but in the last week or so, there have been more like a few thousand of them, just passing through, heading back up to their breeding grounds in the north and refueling on the way. There were also several greylag geese in the field which is the grey goose that can normally be seen in Orkney in large numbers. Within the next couple of weeks most will have left for more northerly climes.

There were many other birds to be seen and heard this morning, including the noisy pig-like squeals of the water rail and we had a fantastic flyby from a female hen harrier ...but I have to stop somewhere or I'll be here until midnight!  It's well worth dropping by a hide or joining us on one the next 'Surgery Sessions'. Here is a photo of what The Loons can look like at the height of summer on a slightly warmer day ....