Fife Ness

 Catching up again! This is a brief post with some pics from our visit to Fife Ness and The Fife Bird Club hide there (we are members!)

As you can see this is predominantly a sea watching hide, the "Bird Traffic" is fabulous and on occasions pretty close in, so most are easily identifiable. Plus some good photo opportunities!

And a few more Gannet shots:

Loch Leven Kirkgate & Short Eared Owl

 We had heard there were Short-eared Owls showing from the viewpoint at Kirkgate at Kinross, so we made a couple of visits last week to have a look. The first was late in the day and we did see a Shortie quartering the fields, but I it was dull and very cold so didn't get any decent photos and didn't hang about too long, So we popped back for an hour on Sunday, the sun was out not so windy, so managed to get some better shots:

There were a few other photo opportunities too:

Loch Leven (Findatie)

 We have a few places that we go to on Loch Leven, this time it was the turn of Findatie. It's a lovely walk down from the lodges, along the river for a wee while and then into the woods and to a hide overlooking a pool adjacent to the loch. Apologies if I've said this before!

After the usual 'Garden Birds' on the walk down the slope and admiring some Snowdrops,

we headed along the river and straight away found two Dippers:

Then by the footbridge this male Goosander kept turning its back to us:

We crossed the bridge and walked through the woods to the hide, we heard plenty of birds, but they were staying hidden, apart from a group of Redwing passing through the trees.

We sat in the hide a while having coffee, but it was quiet, nice view though.

So we made our way back this time seeing a flock of Fieldfare passing through where we saw the redwing earlier. Through the trees we could see what we thought was a large flock of Whooper Swans in an adjacent field, more of that in a bit.

The Goosander was still by the bridge on the way back,

and the Dippers were still around as well,

We walked the slightly longer way back to the car (less of a slope!) alongside the loch, adding Goldeneye, Oystercatcher, Mallard and Tufted Duck to the days list.

We grabbed a coffee from the Cafe and sat outside for a while, but it was a bit breezy and cold up the top, so we didn't hang around too long. We drove home the long way round, hoping if we could get a view of the Whoopers somewhere, we did! Tina counted 56, but on studying the photos one turned out to be a Mute Swan, so 55, but loads of youngsters, which is good news.

The Mute Swan is in the centre of this group:

Finally in the same field were three Brown Hare, all a bit distant for a decent photo:

A Walk Around Lochore

 We went for a stroll around the Loch on Tuesday and added Gadwall to our year list and our Loch list up to 39 (only two visits this year so far!)