Saturday 8 September 2007

Missed Opportunity

I went down to the reserve this afternoon to see what was about. It is a truly lovely day today, so i had high hopes of good butterfly opportunities. When i arrived, there was another car parked in the car park, so i knew someone else was about. On the way along to the screen i bumped into a man who had been on the reserve for a couple of hours with his DSLR camera. He showed me some photos of something rather spectacular for the reserve. This morning there had been an Osprey fishing on the reserve! This truly is a great find for him, though a missed opportunity for me. The Osprey was successful in catching a small fish, too. A great sighting for the reserve, and one i'm happy to add to the list! The osprey was pretty much certain to be on passage to their wintering grounds and just decided to stop in for a snack. It's good to know they visit all the same!
I did spot a couple of curlews circling the loch looking for a place to land, but not finding anything and flying off. Once the water level is lowered, they should be a pretty regular occurance on the reserve.
New species this past week has been the addition of some passage wigeon, which stopped off on the loch for a couple of days before heading on. We're obviously getting the start of the autumn migrants through now, so we should be adding to the list a fair amount over the next few weeks. At least that's the theory!

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