The Scotsman visits RSPB Loch Lomond to watch the wardens and volunteers count the thousands of Geese on the site.
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00:00So we're on the south east corner of the loch, we've been here this morning doing a goose roost count
00:06surveying the wintering geese that we get as they're taken off the loch.
00:10So they will spend the night out here on the loch on the water where it's safe from predators
00:15and in the morning they'll all fly off, so this is the opportunity for us to get a good count of them.
00:20We get mainly four different species of goose, so we get the biggest number, we get pink-footed goose,
00:26we also get Canada geese, grey-legged geese, and then we get the Greenland white-fronted goose.
00:31So that's a subspecies of the greater white-fronted goose, that's kind of the most important one to this site,
00:36that informs most of the management of this site, and what we're doing is trying to create better habitat,
00:42better wintering grounds for these white-fronted geese to feed up
00:46so they're ready for their journey back up to Greenland at the end of the winter.
00:49So they sleep on the water, so they're out of the way of stuff like foxes mainly.
00:54Occasionally we get white-tailed eagles in the area, so if you're very lucky you might see one of them.
01:00If a goose is very unlucky, they might see one of them.
01:02All the geese that we get here will have migrated south from Greenland and from Scandinavia.
01:07The main population that we're working with is the white-fronted geese,
01:12so they've come down from Greenland, they spend the winter here,
01:15and we're trying to essentially create good habitat for them to feed,
01:20get the weight back up so they're ready for migration back up north.
01:24The global population of Greenland white-fronted geese is about 16,000.
01:27That number's come down quite significantly over the past few years.
01:32We think that's mostly related to climate change and changes in their breeding grounds up in Greenland.
01:37We get about 1% of the global population spending the winter on the reserve here,
01:42but having little sub-off-group populations like this is really important
01:47in case there's a big outbreak of some kind of disease.
01:51The past five years here, our numbers have been dropping year on year.
01:55This year actually, a bit of good news, is the first year where we've had a slight increase.
02:00I say slight, it's like two birds more, but even the fact that it's stayed pretty stable is good.
02:05We've also, in the past few years, when we've been surveying, not had any juveniles coming through.
02:10So again, I was mentioning their changes in their breeding ground.
02:14We're having a lot of unsuccessful breeding and a lot of juvenile birds
02:18not making the migration from Greenland down to here.
02:21That journey's a bit too long and they're not big and not strong enough yet.
02:24This year, I think up to about nine juveniles seen for the first time in maybe five years,
02:29which is really exciting, so a bit of promising news on the horizon.
02:34Through the winter, we generally get on site about a few thousand pink-footed geese.
02:39So this year we're about 2,000, which is quite low numbers.
02:43I think in the past it's tended to be about 5,000.
02:46That could be a result of bird flu as well.
02:48The white-fronted geese, though, this year we've got a peak count of 165.
02:52When you're talking about pink feet and they're like thousands,
02:55165 seems like quite a small number, but that's 1% of the global population.
03:00So the white-fronts, they come in maybe end of October, start of November.
03:04It can fluctuate a little bit year to year.
03:07We start surveying for them in November and then they'll be away again,
03:10sort of March, April kind of time.
03:12This is a really good place to see osprey.
03:14So we've got quite a lot of osprey nests in the local area.
03:18They're obviously an expanding population in Scotland.
03:21And because the water is so shallow here, it's a really good place for them to fish.
03:25So you can come and sit down at net bay here, sit and watch for an hour,
03:29and you might get lucky and see an osprey catch a fish.
03:31Up the top of the site, we've got a car park.
03:34We've recently introduced a small parking charge.
03:36Parking is ┬г2 for the first hour and ┬г1 for every hour additionally.
03:40If you're a member of the RSPB, that's totally free, though.
03:43We've got about a 45-minute walk down to the loch shore,
03:46through the woods, you get to go over the fen.
03:49We've put in this new trail to link up two different parts of the reserve
03:53a couple of years ago, so it's really opened up the space
03:55and you can access it much more easily.
03:57You can get wheelchairs down, you can get pushchairs down, that kind of thing.
04:00Reserve access is totally free.
04:02There's just the parking charge, but anyone can come by any time.
04:05Once you're in, you can spend as much time here as you want.
04:08There's generally staff on site from about 9 to 5 every day.
04:13But even outside of those hours, you can come down whenever you want
04:16and enjoy the wildlife.
04:18Summer and winter, the reserve looks very different.
04:20So winter, we're mainly about the geese and the water birds,
04:23that kind of thing.
04:25Coming into the summer, the woodland, I would say, is the highlight.
04:29That's the start. It lights up.
04:31We've got various bits of woodland, different ages,
04:34different sort of coniferous woodland, deciduous woodland,
04:37and all kinds of different beautiful songbirds,
04:39so stuff like red starts, tree pivots, wood warblers,
04:42fairly rare stuff, as well as a lot of stuff that you might know
04:45maybe from your local park.
04:47Coming down early morning, it's this beautiful symphony of birdsong
04:51definitely worth having a look at.