Trip reports

A bird watching outing to an RSPB reserve

Wednesday, 21 October 2009

With rain forecast for the day a hardy group met at Vane Farm on a damp dreich morning. Before setting off we noticed all the staff gathering in the car park - the fire alarm had gone off - we heard later that it had been a false alarm. With no sign of flames or smoke we quick marched past the visitors` centre and down to the hides. Dunnocks skulking, robins singing and Margaret saw a bullfinch, the rest of us only heard it.
We decided to start at the third hide usually the best, on the way a dead shrew lay on the path. Once at the hide there was only a handful of birds about, a moorhen, a black-headed gull, a buzzard on a distant tree and a kestrel flying overhead. At the second hide there was not much more though Mike saw a wader fly off, it seemed later that it was probably a green sandpiper. So we continued back stopping before the first hide where we had a good view of Loch Leven. At last success with mute and whooper swans, a lovely family group of the latter really close in. There were a wide variety of ducks including a pair of pintail, wigeon, teal, goldeneye and also great crested grebes. On the mud were a flock of lapwing and two greenshank, sadly the snipe flew off when a raptor put everything up, was it a peregrine? nobody managed to spot it. An early lunch in the hide added stonechat and a variety of tits and finches on the feeders and in the bushes and reeds.
The rain hadn`t materialised and it was slightly brighter so we continued to the Heritage Trail at Findatie. Common gulls and jackdaws in the fields, a perching kestrel and a heron looking very odd on a barn roof. We saw and heard a lot of herons on our walk but very few small birds, Sam found us a lovely group of siskin acrobatically feeding in an alder and although we heard tree creepers we couldn`t find any. At the hide we had teal, moorhen and more herons and Val spotted a beautiful snipe, so well camouflaged but right out in the open. On the way back we found the same bedraggled red admiral at the bridge.
A far better day than we had imagined, we managed over 40 species and really good close views of some of them.