First Visit to Loch of the Lowes

 Having joined the Scottish Wildlife Trust we took ourselves off to Loch of the Lowes, just a 45 minute drive from us.

I have to say we were very impressed with the whole set up and the friendliness of the volunteers. Access to the hides (2) is great with great views of the Osprey nest on the opposite shore of the Loch. Each hide have good quality scopes, so there was no need for me to have lugged ours from the car! SO we had a great views of both Osprey coming and going from the nest, bringing back new nesting materials. Both hides also have TVs showing the nest cam, so an all round great experience.

So apart from the Ospreys it was pretty quiet on the Loch itself with Tufted Duck, Goldeneye, Black-headed Gull and a couple of Buzzards putting in an appearance.

The feeders viewed from the visitor centre were very entertaining:

The Great Spotted Woodpeckers 

and the Nuthatch being the highlights

With a good supporting cast of Chaffinch

Great Tits,

and Coal Tit.

Of course there were Blue Tits, Robin, Crows, Pigeon and Blackbird. Finally as we walked back to teh car a Jay put in appearance.

A great place with many more visits to come I'm sure!

Loch Leven - Findatie

 I haven't posted for a while, a number of factors, but we've mainly been very busy and not a lot of time for birding!

However we managed to get up to Loch Leven for a few hours on Wednesday, going for a walk from the Findatie car park. We enjoy Findatie as it's a good mix of loch, river and woodland, so a good variety of birds if you can spot them! 😏

In the end though we had a good list, with few photo opportunities though, but I did manage a few.

As we started down the path from the car park, I caught a brief glimpse of a Goldcrest before it shot off, the nearby field held a few Greylag, one of which is shown below,

From the hide a number of Grey Heron were seen constantly moving from fishing spot to fishing spot in the strong winds,

Amorous frogs were about on the paths,

a male Goldeneye showed briefly on the river, through the undergrowth, befoire it flew off!

A Treecreeper gave us a good show,

and we saw our first Sand Martins of the year hawking over the loch.

An Oystercatcher smartening himself up,

and a pair of Black-headed Gulls sunning themselves now in full summer plumage.

That'll do for now!