What a 24hrs of weather, with brilliant sunshine today but yesterday afternoon we had the most amazing thunderstorm at around 5pm: A black sky, deafening thunder, torrential rain ( flash flooding paths and roads) and nearby lightning strikes kept  the staff and volunteers stuck in the visitors centre until it  finally calmed down at around 6pm. We lost electricity, and water supply and the phone lines all went down- complete with sparks issuing from sockets!

Needless to say the cameras and webcams all went down and we have only been able to restart most some of them this morning, so we have a picture in the centre. Power surges seems to have affected others and we are still minus a phone line which means we will not have a webcam stream until we can get it all fixed- our apologies for this disruption, which may be for a couple of days.

During all this chaos, our young Osprey Blue 44 sat on the nest seemingly unperturbed- even though I was worried he might be very exposed up there to lighting which seemed to be everywhere. The loch is now at an almost record level at nearly 10 feet on our measuring marker- and lots of the local paths, roads and fields are flooded. Those brave visitors who joined me today on my monthly guided walk from Dunkeld to Loch of the Lowes had to be good at walking on water! We were rewarded however, with great views of Jays, Swallows massing in the fields, Long tailed tits, and the beautiful Roe deer with her young fawn grazing in the woods just by the reserve path. She seems to be a regular fixture for now in this area – look out for a red ginger glimpse in the trees between the path and loch.

We have updated Blue 44 satellite tagging data today and you can seen on the map page that on Tuesday at around 8am he took his furthest flight so far- all the way to the other side of Butterstone Loch. This is a great sign and interestingly it seems early morning exploration flights seem to be becoming his pattern.

The other satellite tagged osprey from SWT Angus, Blue YD has also been venturing further afield, flying 10 miles or so this week and back.

Lastly here is a beautiful picture taken by our volunteer Phil Hannah of one of our other residents who ahs been visiting the feeders- I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a cracker!