Here at the Scottish Wildlife Trust Perthshire reserves, our work to help and protect wildlife never stops, even in the depths of winter! Just because the ospreys are away doesn’t  mean there isn’t plenty to do and we are always thinking ahead to the next breeding season.

Your ranger and her two volunteers Amelia and Chantal have been busy this last couple of weeks, with all sorts of things such as:  maintaining the bird feeding station,  de-icing paths and car parks, cleaning up storm blown trees, and doing beaver vegetation impact monitoring and removing alien pine species from our oak woodland. We have also been in the office writing up species lists of birds, mammals plants and insects  for this years surveying on reserves, and creating some interesting maps and statistics of the practical conservation work done this year to help keep our reserves in tip top condition for wildlife.

Of particular interest, we thought you’d like to know about the nest boxes at Loch of the Lowes– we have an amazing 90 different boxes for all different species on the reserve to maximise its habitat value. These include various different  styles of bird boxes, for everything from owls to woodpeckers, to tree creepers and flycatchers. This year we’ve had over 70% of the boxes used for nesting  which is well above average and a sign of a good breeding year for our local birds. We also have roosting boxes for bats and denning boxes for pine martens on the reserve.

One of our specialist boxes is for Goldeneye ducks and this year we have put up 6 new boxes along the lochside for these remarkable ducks. These were made for us earlier this year by a group of Pitlochry High School students- thanks folks!!!

 New boxes being put up around the loch shores, December 2013

Let’s hope 2014 is another good breeding year for the local wildlife!

Ranger Emma