Events from the nest:

In contrast to yesterday, the female has been incubating the eggs for the majority of today. She took over incubation from ‘7Y’ at 10am and stayed on the nest for the remainder of the morning. ‘7Y’ returned briefly at 11:58 carrying a stick, which he carefully positioned on the nest before flying off. At 12:40 ‘7Y’ arrived at the nest again, this time carrying a small headless pike, which he presented to the female. She proceeded to take the fish from him and flew off, with ‘7Y’ settling down onto the eggs immediately. Having eaten the fish the female returned to the nest and resumed incubation for the rest of the afternoon. A second small pike was brought in by ‘7Y’ at 5:17 and the female took this away to eat, returning very quickly at 5:23.

Other wildlife at Loch of the Lowes:

Following on from yesterday’s great crested grebe courtship displays and territorial disputes one of the pairs now have an egg on their nest. The typical clutch size for great crested grebes is 3-4 so hopefully we should see more eggs laid in the coming days, with hatching anticipated approximately 27-29 days later.

Also on the loch today was a female goosander with five young, a couple of which were seen to be riding on her back. Other sightings include 4 mute swans, 30 canada geese, 3 greylag geese, plus the ever present mallards.

A tawny owl was seen flying through the trees behind the visitor centre – a rare sight during daylight hours. Other birds spotted around the reserve and at the feeding station were great spotted woodpeckers, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, greenfinches, siskins, a wren, a treecreeper, a spotted flycatcher, a jay, a blackbird, a yellowhammer and a juvenille robin. Up to four red squirrels were seen today as well as a bank vole and a hedgehog.

Due to staff work programme commitments the next blog will be on Tuesday when we will bring you a full update of events from the weekend and Monday. 

Jonathan

Visitor Centre Assistant