Trip reports

Hogganfield Park Local Nature Reserve, Glasgow

Wednesday, 14 January 2009

At 10.00am on a cold Wednesday morning, 14 members assembled at the Hogganfield Park car park for the mid-week outing. Although conditions were freezing there was no ice cover on the loch which was unfortunate, as the previous week the wildfowl and gulls tended to be standing on the ice next to what open water there was, adjacent to the car park. This made identification of the gulls very much simpler - in particular, the yellow-legged gull which had been reported from there. The other vagrant which had been showing well, but had moved on, was a lesser scaup.

Before leaving the car park some of the party espied a sparrowhawk hunting over the loch. Despite the icy conditions underfoot, we made our way round the loch and were rewarded with excellent views of displaying goldeneye and goosander. In addition, there were shoveler, teal, great crested and little grebes, mallard, coot, moorhen, mute and whooper swans. Gulls were represented by black-headed, common and lesser black-backs. There were not many passerines, but dunnock, robin, pied wagtail and stonechat were seen. On the Island the usual cormorant was perched in a tree together with a rook.

On the return journey we encountered the local authority spreading salt on the footpath, by which time more attention was being given to moving and keeping warm rather than checking the birds.

We arrived back at the car park about 12 noon - to thaw out - and go our separate ways!

Ian C McCallum