Vane Farm

11th December 2012

Well the twitter lines were alive with the fact that the White Tailed Sea Eagle had returned to the RSPB reserve at Vane Farm, so gear was packed on Friday night ready for a trip out.

Up on Saturday morning to a fine but slippy covering of snow in the 'shire meant the journey took longer that usual for safety reasons. On arriving at Vane Farm, the teas shop discussion was centred around the White Tail and its return. Sadly, there was quite a thick fog hanging over Loch Leven making any viewing, even from the observation deck almost a waste of time.

Fortified by tea and home made scones I decided to walk down to the newly refurbished 3rd hide, both for a nosy, and also to see if thw Eagle was there, as that had been its last known location.

As I wandered down and over the new bridge to the hide, I couldn't believe my eyes when sitting 20m from me, on a little raised patch of land was the very bird. Its head swivelled round and it fixed me with its beady eyes. I stood holding my breath, scared to move, or even get my camera or binos out in case I scared it.

After about 5 minutes, a few swans flapped overhead and spooked the bird, which took off into the mist.

(c) Wikipedia

I went down to the hide but didn't see it again

The mist came and went, going from impenetrable to hardly wort seeing and all that was there to be seen was a couple of Whooper Swans

a few Curlew not up to much

and not much else.

I wandered back up to the other hides, only seeing a single Grey Heron

At the last hide I couldn't see anything at all, other than the usual greenfinch and chaffinch feeding on the feeders, but did speak to an interesting lady who is finishing off a photography course, and doing a photo-documentary of Vane farm. Some of her work can be found on Linda Reid Photography, on Facebook, and are definitely worth a look.

Well that was that for the day and a trip through the RSPB shop brought great excitement when I shared the news of my sighting, bringing on tweets from @Caroline_Rance, and also announced by me on @WL_Birder

All in all a quiet day but entirely worth it. Hopefully I will get to see it in better conditions and get a few decent photographs of my own.