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Hello everyone!

This morning was the best morning for birds I have had this month! And it was all because I decided to walk a different route to work - had it not been for this change in my routine, they day might have been quite different.

When I woke up this morning, I was very pleased to see the sun shining. The last few days had been quite dull so it was a welcome start. I headed out along the road and suddenly heard some unusual bird calls. I looked up in the trees and low and behold, there were about 35 waxwings sitting above me, not a care in the world, chattering away and preening themselves. Well, I almost whooped with joy - I have been trying to see waxwings for a number of years and have always arrived to find they have moved on to a new berry tree somewhere, but not today! I phoned everyone I knew (who was awake!) and told them to come and see them. Zul, the reserve manager, said this was only the second time he'd seen them in the village, so was also delighted. After watching them for about 20 minutes we headed towards the reserve to open up and see what else was around.

Well, the morning just kept improving; a female long tailed duck was on the Aird Meadow loch, and also a very obvious female scaup. About 30mins after seeing these, the male hen harrier decided to put in an appearance. Now, we have been seeing him every few days, but only fleetingly. Today, he hung about for over an hour, so plenty of visitors were able to see him as he swooped over the meadow, flushing snipe as he went.

On a different note, there has been a large increase in the number of mole hills appearing around the feeding station. The high water levels over the past few weeks has probably pushed them up towards the higher ground, and that's where they have decided to stay, there seems to be at least one new mound every morning - there must be a good supply of invertebrates for them to enjoy!

This week has been one of interesting sightings. All around the local area, there have been lots of reports of unusual ducks, waxwing invasions and huge counts of swans (163 whooper swans near Inchinnan!) The reserve has been subject to several 'unconfirmed' rarities this week as well, including nuthatch (heard but not seen), long tailed duck (disappeared into the reeds) and barred warbler (hidden away in brambles).

Whilst for most of us high winds and unexpected hail storms are pretty unpleasant, for birdwatchers, it often means some passage migrants stop off in their local patch, providing many people with hours of delight hunting for the elusive species in question.

This week for me has been all about trees, part of my work involves looking at the reserve trees for health and safety reasons, and this week i was lucky enough to be able to visit one of the least accessible woodlands on the reserve, and the trees there were absolutely stunning. Although most of the leaves have now fallen from them, the bark and the features on these ancient giants were fascinating. I learnt that when a beech tree loses a limb or if the bark becomes diseased, it can heal itself. It blocks off the offending areas and forms a sort of 'scab' to protect the rest of the tree, and where limbs are concerned, the tree grafts itself around the site of the break to protect itself from the elements. Wow!

Trees with no leaves are actually quite a good thing for birdwatchers, as it is at this time of year that you can actually see the birds moving around on the branches. This is a great opportunity for many of us to swat up on our ID skills and also, to try and put bird calls (rather than songs) with the birds themselves - it is always much easier to learn things like calls when you can both see the bird and hear it - so off i go a-listening...

Enjoy your week!

Paula

Hello everyone. I hope you have had a good couple of weeks?

This week's blog is dedicated to the return of our wonderful migrant species to the reserve. Those remarkable birds that travel great distances to spend the winter on our reserve, and for that I feel honored.

Only 2 or 3 weeks ago, during our last Wetland Birds Survey (WEBS), I came away disappointed at the amount of wildfowl that had returned to the reserve. Just a small handful of birds had made their way back to us, and most of the others we had seen so far, whooper swans for example, had simply passed overhead or stopped very briefly to catch their breath.

However, I was not concerned at this lack of birds because I knew deep down that slowly but surely they would start to appear...and they have!

This morning, over our Sunday morning tea break, I saw the first male hen harrier of the year and jumped up from my seat shouting "hen harrier, look, over there..." (Hen harriers are quite common in this area but only tend to come down to hunt on the reserve in the winter, as food becomes scarce up on the moorlands). The harrier then proceeded to flush (a 'technical' term for scare) all of the snipe from the Aird Meadow, which turned out to be somewhere between 60-70 birds, which was quite a sight on it's own!

After that, we began looking at the ducks as I'd noticed that for the first time this season, there were quite a number of them on the Aird Meadow. You get the best view from up in the tower so that's where we went. From there we could see a whole array of birds - wigeon, goldeneyes, pochard, goosanders, mallards, tufted ducks and mute swans, plus one lonely great crested grebe in winter plumage. There were also 13 cormorants all crowded onto our single surviving raft.

It was great to be able to spend some time looking at them all again, and refreshing my memory about what their distinguishing features are.

Although no whooper swans were on the Aird Meadow today, there were 18 there yesterday and there is a strong chance they will now be on the Barr Loch, as that's where they usually prefer to be.

When it comes to the next WEBS count, I know i won't be disappointed!

Welcome back one and all!