As the temperature here at Loch of  The Lowes continues to climb (to an amazing 24degrees today!) and the loch gets even lower, the dry spell is beginning to affect us and our wildlife. We recently planted dozens of trees around the visitor centre to replace those lost in the winter storms, and we have been frantically watering these  this last week. Today myself and my volunteer ranger team were out at Balnaguard Glen reserve planting yet more trees and we got a wee bit sunburnt- hard to believe when just three weeks ago (on the 7^th of March) we were planting in the same place in snow showers.

Today has brought more Osprey sightings at Loch of the Lowes but so far today none on the nest. There were two birds hunting over the loch this morning and one landed for some time on the birch trees opposite the nest- as you can see from Byran’s wonderful photograph taken just after dawn:

This afternoon another osprey was seen carrying a fish away from the loch around 4pm.

However, there has been a lot of other activity and excitement around: The first Sand Martin of the year was seen this afternoon over the loch ( surely a record for early spring arrival of this species here); and a Redstart was seen on our woodland bird feeding station this morning- a very unusual and good sighting.  Add to this a good sighting of Long Tailed Tits, a very interesting coloured Buzzard, and Mallard and Moorhen are both already one eggs, and it is getting very interesting indeed.

Our cameras continue to plague us with glitches and imperfections, for which we apologise- our volunteer technician is back on Friday to try yet more fixes, hopefully before birds arrive and our options become limited. It is somehow comforting to know we are not the only ones plagued by technical problems- our sympathies with the great team at Loch Garten with their recent computer issues. Wildlife is well behaved by comparison to technology sometimes!