The month started the same way as the last month had ended, with some glorious weather.
It was not long though before things got back to normal for the time year, with the odd frosty morning and cooler days. It did stay dry early on in the month and this was good for letting us push on with our bulb planting along the river.
Before the month was out there was over four and a half tonnes of Daffodil bulbs, approximately five thousand Bluebell bulbs and a couple of thousand Fritilliari bulbs all put into the ground at various locations about the river from the lower kinfauns area right up to the Fishery.
Hopefully we will see a blaze of colour in some places come the spring time. It was good to see some of the regular fishers are still turning out and catching a few trout at the fishery while we were up planting in that location.
We did take the chance to fill a few crates of apples from our orchard during this dry spell, these will be stored in a cool dry place and then be used to help feed the birds later on in the colder winter months that lie ahead.
We had three visits from the SSPCA this month(on the 6th, 20th and the 28th)who brought more Cygnets and ducks with them for releasing back into the wild again; so there are sixteen released swans swimming about the estuary just now!
As the weather changed we were seeing a lot more movement of birds along the estuary; Geese, Lapwing, Teal, Redwing and Fieldfare numbers started to pick up and the Dippers and Kingfishers were more frequent visitors to the burn behind our bothy. We had the Dabchicks back on the 10th and some Misttle Thrush hung about for a few of days.
We have had three swans with green darvex rings in about this month, HNB and PIP on the 2nd and JTN on the19th. It was good to see our first Whoopers back on the 28th, we had two that came in quite close to the bothy while some of the Mute swans were there feeding on the grain that had been put out for them. We had a few more coasters plying their trade up to Perth Harbour again this month, some of the bigger boats were taking advantage of the bigger tides that we had in the last week.
The last few days of the month saw some heavy rain and the river was back out in spate again.
Dago