Life at Loch Leven: exploring work and wildlife on the nature reserve

In this episode we head to Loch Leven National Nature Reserve to meet with Reserve Manager Jeremy Squire and Reserve Officer Sally Reay to learn about the area's vibrant ecosystem and the huge variety of wildlife that thrives in this habitat.

Discover the seasonal spectacles that make Loch Leven a critical sanctuary for numerous species. With each season offering its own unique wonders, you'll learn what to look for and when to visit for an unforgettable wildlife experience, from courtship displays by great crested grebes and the dramatic arrival of pink-footed geese, to tornado-like swarms of non-biting midges.

Jeremy and Sally share the importance of balancing conservation efforts with public access, ensuring that both wildlife and visitors can benefit from this stunning landscape. Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at the tireless work of the reserve staff and volunteers, and be inspired to visit this special place.

More Information: 

NatureScot Loch Leven National Nature Reserve 

RSPB Loch Leven nature reserve

Follow the NNR Facebook page for up-to-date information on reserves across Scotland.

Transcript:

Kirstin: 

Hi, and welcome to Make Space for Nature from NatureScot, the podcast that celebrates Scotland's nature, landscapes and species. I'm Kirstin Guthrie, and in each episode, my guests and I will help you learn more about our amazing natural world. In this episode, I head outdoors to Loch Leven National Nature Reserve to meet with NatureScot Reserve Manager Jeremy Squire and Reserve Officer Sally Reay. We hear about the unique biodiversity found at Loch Leven and the important work being carried out by staff and volunteers to protect these precious habitats. 

So we're here at Loch Leven National Nature Reserve. You may be able to hear the birds and possibly a bit of wind in the background here. It's such a beautiful place, a unique habitat and home to many different species of wildlife and we've been joined by Reserve Manager Jeremy Squire. So hello Jeremy, welcome to the podcast, thank you so much for joining us today. Can you tell us about your role with NatureScot please? 

Jeremy: 

I started with NatureScot in 2001 when I had a short contract for three months and I’m still here. After a couple of little breaks over 20 years later. I've also worked on the Isle of May and done little bits of area work and things like that. So, I've done quite a bit with NatureScot in the past. 

Kirstin: 

Yeah, I mean that's a long time you've been here after that initial three months. So, it's great to have you with us. And, can you just tell us about the local area and what's the habitat like here at Loch Leven, please? 

Jeremy: 

Well, Loch Leven's a sort of unique habitat. It's a big freshwater loch. It's eutrophic, which means it's nutrient rich, which means that we get the plant life and with the plant life, then we get the insect life and then that attracts in the bird life. So Loch Leven's sort of pretty famous for its wildfowl. If you imagine somewhere like Loch Ness, which is a big open water that's now very very deep and so you don't get the plant growth but here at Loch Leven's average sort of water depth is about four metres so you get tons and tons of macrophytes growing and this is the sort of the basis of the sort of life here at Loch Leven and why we get so many birds.

Kirstin: 

We've been out looking at nests this morning and there's a fascinating diversity of birds here. So can you just tell us about some of the birds that are here all year and also the ones that perhaps arrive over winter? 

Jeremy: 

So right now we've been looking at breeding birds here and we've been looking specifically for tufted duck nests. At one point there were over 400 tufted duck nests on St. Serf's Island where we stood. And that represented 13 percent of the breeding population for the United Kingdom. There aren't as many nests here now, but there's still probably a couple of hundred nests out here. So the other main breeder, breeding duck, that we have here is mallard. There's probably 200 nests around St. Serf's Island here. And then we also have lesser numbers of gadwall, which is a duck that's very similar to mallard. And, and a few shovelers nesting as well. Historically, there used to be wigeon and pintail nesting here, but we haven't seen those nests for quite a long time.

Kirstin: 

That's great. And we, we've you might be able to hear in the background, there's quite a lot of gulls. What kind of gulls are here? 

Jeremy: 

There are lesser blackback and herring gulls. There's also a small colony of black headed gulls out here as well.

Kirstin: 

Brilliant. It's actually fantastic - just the noise they make is, is, is amazing actually. It's been lovely to hear it. And just the kind of location and geography of Loch Leven. We're near, quite near Kinross. It's quite an accessible nature reserve. There's a path that goes all the way around the loch, isn't there? 

Jeremy: 

Yep, traditionally there was very little access to Loch Leven in the past the estate was run as a sporting estate, but there were three access points around the loch where people could come and visit. A local charity that was into improving access around the Kinross-shire area, got together and came up with a plan to link all these access points with a path which is about 13 miles in total and links up the local villages as well. 

Kirstin: 

No, that's great. I've cycled it myself. It's a lovely, lovely cycle and you see so many different species and habitats as you, as you go around. So, I mean, it's a fascinating reserve. NatureScot, we manage one part of the reserve. So how's the reserve split? Why does it need to be split like this? 

Jeremy: 

I think it's back in… I have to check the year here but 1964 the RSPB were looking for a site in Scotland and there was a choice of a few of them. I think Carsebreck Loch was one of them as well up in Perthshire. This site was for sale. I believe there was interest in there being a waterworks on the site but the RSPB bought the farm and created wetlands slowly over the years. It was mainly an education center rather than a nature reserve, but then that's expanded over the years. So in 2004, when the nature reserve agreement was resigned, the RSPB took control of the land that is in front of their area. So it's a short patch of shoreline, probably two and a half to three kilometers which they manage for their purposes. They're more interested in breeding waders, breeding farmland waders. So we manage for, for ducks. So they took over that part of the shoreline as part of their remit. 

Kirstin: 

And are there facilities there, they've got the centre open there, haven't they? They've got a cafe and a viewing area and what not?

Jeremy: 

They have a very good cafe, good coffee, and they have hides there where they can overlook their wetlands that they've created.

Kirstin: 

Okay, brilliant. So certainly, you know, there's lots to do here and lots to see, and you've also got your own hides dotted throughout the kind of path around the loch. What would you say are kind of some of the best things that people can come and see if they decide to come around the loch at these hides?

Jeremy: 

This time of year it's brimming with life. We are just seeing lots of ducklings hatch now. You can get quite close up views of them from our viewing screens that are dotted around the west side of the loch. Also, you can hear all the sort of bird song that's surrounding us at the moment. We've got reed buntings and willow warblers and lots of, lots of birds singing around us. Things like dragonflies are starting to emerge as well. It's also worth visiting…we spend a lot of time managing our sort of shoreline meadows. We don't have great tracks of land to manage, our role is mainly open water, but there are, the meadow at Burley Sand is, is quite popular with a good diversity of plants. We have managed it well over the last few years, managing to cut it and lift the grass off, which is a great way of improving meadows. 

Kirstin: 

And so, you know, Loch Leven is a unique habitat. Why does this specific area need to be managed by NatureScot? I mean, it does have, it overlaps with several protected areas, the special protection area, Ramsar site, a site of special scientific interest. So, you know, what, what is the kind of work that goes on there that NatureScot manages? 

Jeremy: 

It is a unique site as explained before about the sort of general wildlife that we do have here. But it's a great way for NatureScot to showcase Scotland's nature. And we've got this, now got this path that will take you through a variety of habitats. And it's also a good way of showing really high level, gold-plated management that we do here, as well. 

Kirstin: 

Yeah, no, that's brilliant. And, I mean, there is such a lot of work that goes on and it's so varied too. So, how do you manage all this work on the reserve? Who else helps? Obviously, it's not just yourself. You know, you must have a team and possibly volunteers as well? 

Jeremy: 

Yeah, there's two full time staff that will do the day-to-day stuff. I'm unfortunately sat in the office more than I'd like to be. I've got my assistant Sally, she'll do a lot of the maintenance work and I also got a group of volunteers that come in on a Wednesday as well. They've been one of the first really established volunteer groups that SNH, as was, brought in back in when they brought in a new volunteer policy in 2007. We pretty much meet every week. There's very few weeks where we don't have any volunteers in and they're doing a lot of the tidying up and, as well as maintenance, they will help us with survey work as well. And so we do, we do have groups of volunteers that come in on a Monday and a Friday as well, who will come in and survey insect areas for us as well. So we've got a lot of long term data that's collected on the site, just by volunteers alone. 

Kirstin: 

That's great and you were talking to me earlier about the kind of corporate groups that come out sometimes. Is that on the increase or are there more people actually beginning to kind of look after the environment, perhaps having a volunteering day out from the office? 

Jeremy: 

Yeah we get a lot of inquiries about that. Most of them unfortunately are in the summertime when we're doing the sort of more boring tasks like non-native plant removal but I've had a couple of groups in recently that were very helpful to get our new viewing screen open as well, doing fencing and things like that. That was really helpful. 

Kirstin: 

That's brilliant. I definitely think people would much prefer to be out here enjoying the outdoors than stuck behind a computer at a desk so it sounds like a fantastic opportunity. And I mean, it does sound like it is a special place to work and visit. And are there particular species of plants, animals, insects that are perhaps unique to this area? And when is the best time to visit? 

Jeremy: 

So from about late April onwards, there's a good chance one of our favourite unique plants around here is holy grass, which is a very flowery seed head grass, which has got a sort of sweet smell. Smells more like marjoram, but some people say it smells like vanilla. Another highlight of the spring, if the water quality is good, we do get these sort of tornadoes of non-biting midges. These chironomids, this is all connected with abundance of food for ducks and these can be quite spectacular. The height of the tallest trees, these sort of tornadoes of midges. It's quite a hard sell though, to people who visit, who breathe them in and aren't necessarily prepared to see them. But this can be one of sort of nature's spectacular things. This is billions and billions of insects flying around. And you've got to be sort of lucky depending on the weather conditions, but the shows can be very spectacular. 

Hopefully they're on nests by now, but in the spring there's a few places around the reserve where you'll see the courtship and dancing of the great crested grebes. There's approximately 40 pairs around the loch. They're a slightly mysterious species, because the nests are quite difficult to find tucked deep in reed beds. And they seem to wait until a certain time, whether it's water level related, or whether it's just food availability. When they actually hatch their chicks, and we don't see a chick all summer and then come into August, suddenly they're hatching their chicks all around the loch. So in the autumn, around the sort of shallow fringe around Loch Leven, we do get many ducks migrating from all around Europe. So, in September, early September, we will see huge numbers of tufted ducks. Last autumn there's approximately 12,000 here. Now these there's ducks as far as the eye can see on the sort of east side, the shallow, shallow area, shallow side of the loch. Mixed in with those, they're as the autumn progresses, we'll see up to 10,000 Teal, 4,000 pochard, so teal are a small duck, half the size of a half the size of a mallard with a green and chestnut head grey body. They like feeding in the sort of shallow water around the loch. Pochard, which are related to the tufted duck, they're with a grey body and a chestnut head, another diving duck. We'll see up to 1600 of those. A bird that's sort of declined in number across the UK. We've always had between four and a half thousand, five thousand most autumns. Their numbers have dropped but the decline isn't as steep as in other places. Yeah, so we'll see up to a thousand pintails as well. These are a grey duck with a long tail, nice chocolate brown head. They're another one that appears in the autumn. Unfortunately, a lot of these birds will disappear. The food begins to run out in November and also the water level comes up as well. So the number of food accessibility gets a bit lower and so these ducks will start to disappear, and in the winter they're replaced largely by goldeneye. A large amount of goldeneye will be present on the site. 

Something else to look out for in the autumn is brown trout migrating up the burns. You can see them in from the bridges across the burns that go around the loch occasionally. Loch Leven trout has been transported throughout the world to many countries, Canada, Yemen lots of places over the years. There is talk that it's actually a species, a subspecies. Obviously these trout feed well on the abundance of food on the site, the obvious one. Loch Leven has got a very good head of pink footed geese, particularly in the autumn. It's one of the first sort of staging posts where we'll probably see 20,000 birds before they start either migrating through to Norfolk or down to Lancashire from here. We hang on to a few throughout the winter, but we start off with sort of 20,000 and then the first in sort of September, October and then the numbers drop through down to hardly any in the winter and then the numbers start to build again in the sort of springtime. It's a sort of familiar call across Kinross-shire in the autumn and winter. The wink wink call. 

Kirstin: 

The wink wink call? Yeah, yeah. Is that the pink footed geese?

Jeremy: 

I would say the pink footed geese are wink wink and greylag geese are ang ang. 

Kirstin: 

That's a good description actually. 

Jeremy: 

So the geese largely use it because it's a safe roost site, there's sort of shallow edges to the loch and there's islands for them to sit on but life's not as simple for geese where they come in in the evening and then fly out during the day to feed on the local farmer's fields. They'll actually come back and use the site to preen and wash themselves and they sort of go back and forth during the day, come back to drink as well. And some actually will feed on the sort of macrophyte growth around the loch as well.

Kirstin: 

That's great. It is absolutely teaming with wildlife and biodiversity here. And you know what, I'm going to ask you this question, and I know you'll probably say you can't answer this, but what is a typical day like for you here? Is there such a thing as a typical day here at Loch Leven? 

Jeremy: 

Look I think, I think no two days are alike. I used to be more outdoor based, but these days I'm a little bit more office based. So the days can be quite similar. So the last few days I've been catching up because I've been surveying bonxies on St. Kilda. So, sometimes I can be rescuing swans or some days I'm on machinery and we've got a, we inherited a fen cutting machine so I've been doing a lot of work with that. So, some days we've got to be a bit reactive with the weather. We've had trees blown down and then some days just doing habitat work. So, yeah, there are no two days alike really.

Kirstin: 

Well that's quite exciting, I think, for your kind of job. And what's your favourite thing about the nature reserve, you know, what, what makes it so special for you? Is there a certain area or a certain species, what is, or a certain type of work that you like to do, what do you love about it? 

Jeremy: 

I just do like to see in the autumn, the large amount of ducks that are around the loch shore, that's what it's all about to me. Seeing 50,000 wildfowl just in one view is quite spectacular and probably quite underrated as well.

Kirstin: 

That's brilliant. Thank you so much for chatting to us today, Jeremy. We're now going to head to a different part of the reserve where we're meeting with Nature Reserve Officer Sally Reay. 

Hi Sally, nice to meet you. Can you tell us about the work you're doing here, please?

Sally: 

Yeah, so this time of year, we are, or I am focusing on some tufted duck monitoring on St. Serfs Island. So what we're doing is we're coming out and I'm trying to find as many nests as I can. And then I'm marking them and I'm monitoring them by keeping track of their clutch size, visiting the nests once a week or once every other week and then finally establishing whether the nest has been predated or they have managed to successfully hatch. 

Kirstin: 

Okay, and when you're heading out to St Serf's Island to find and mark the nest, what are you actually doing when you're out there?

Sally: 

So as well as just marking the nests, we're also putting cameras out because part of the idea of doing this is to see what might be predating them because there's never been a lot of information on that. There's people who've just always had suspicions. 

Kirstin: 

Okay, and, and the results from the work you're doing, what, how, what does it, well, obviously it tells us the kind of the predators, but how else does this work inform decision making at the reserve?

Sally: 

Well it'll, it'll give us an idea of how well the birds are doing basically. But also, you know, we do manage St Serfs. So we get the sheep on the end of summer and into autumn as, to graze the, the grass on it. At the minute it's really tall and you know, where, where most of the ducks have nested it is a bit shorter than where we are and that's like, the ideal height for them is just not too tall. So that's why the sheep come to graze it. We do other stuff out here as well, but that's the main thing. So looking at, looking at things like that, that's what I'm going to come out and do next week. I'm going to actually measure this, the height of the vegetation, where these nests are and obviously if they are favouring lower stuff, maybe we'd want to alter how we have the sheep come on a graze. It's, it's just part of one of the things we would look at. 

Kirstin: 

And so you mentioned that you come out to St Serf's Island, but there are a couple of islands in Loch Leven, are they accessible by the public?

Sally: 

No, we ask that if anyone is on the water, they don't land on any of the islands. All of them are covered in breeding birds, even the small ones will have breeding birds on them. So yeah, from April to September, people are allowed on, on the loch in paddle boards, kayaks or canoes. But yeah, we ask everyone to stay 200 metres away from the shoreline and not land on the islands. And if, if you really want to, Historic Scotland do run boats out to Castle Island. But yeah, otherwise we ask people to just keep away and yeah, give the wildlife its space. 

Kirstin: 

Brilliant. Okay, and that's April to September and what about the rest of the year? 

Sally: 

Yeah, from September until the end of March we ask for no water access whatsoever. As I said, there can be tens of thousands of wildfowl on the loch at that point. And this is like a resting spot for them over winter. So yeah, so as to not disturb them, we want no access at all. 

Kirstin: 

And again, your job sounds pretty varied. What is a typical day like for you here, is it as varied as Jeremy's?

Sally: 

It's probably a bit more varied. I'm quite lucky I'm not stuck in the office as much as Jeremy is. But yeah, it can, it's different at different times of year. So I've only been working here since October. So over winter, I feel like the main thing I did was chain-sawing whether that was trees that were already down or part of how we manage the side of the loch for the breeding birds come spring is to fell willow into the loch, not fully so they're still attached to the tree and it'll still grow but it creates a perfect habitat for broods of ducklings and stuff to hide in. So that's one of the habitat management things that we do. And then this time of year, I get to do more monitoring, which is perfect for me. I, that's one of the things I really enjoy doing and then still lots of vegetation management. So we try and keep the paths maintained for the public and yeah, it's been, there's been a lot of rain and there was some sun so everything is huge so it all starts to collapse on the path so I have to keep that clear. Things like that.

Kirstin: 

That's some job! Yeah 21 kilometres of path!

Sally: 

Yeah, yeah some bits we don't really have to do if they're in like woodlands and stuff but yeah there's a lot of different stuff there's other there's other management that I do that's like species specific. I’m also lucky we get we try and do stuff with local communities, so one project that's been going on at Loch Leven for a long time is something called Trout in the Classroom, where we get in touch with local schools and one class from each school will get given a fridge with trout eggs in. And they raise them until they hatch, so you know, they all make their little rotas, they clean out the tanks, they check the temperature, and then we take the kids to one of the burns that runs into the lot where they release them. And then next week actually, we're going back out and someone from the Forth Rivers Trust is going to do some electrofishing so the kids can see their trout, (their trout), it's not, it's not actually their trout, but they can see the trout at the next stage in the life cycle. So that's been quite enjoyable. I've been overseeing that this year. 

Kirstin: 

What a brilliant way to teach the kids, you know, what actually goes on, how it goes on outside of the classroom as well, which is fantastic. And, you know, what makes it so special for you here at Loch Leven and what would you recommend our listeners do or look out for when they visit the nature reserve? 

Sally: 

There's a lot of nice things. After spending the last three summers in Shetland, I've already been enjoying the wider variety of insects, you know, like butterflies, damselflies, bees. But yeah, the birds are lovely as well. But I do agree with Jeremy that in winter, the huge numbers of wildfowl that we get is quite spectacular. Yeah. Yeah, in autumn it's, the numbers start building up. We do, we do counts every other weekend. Yeah, sometimes you just, it's just click, click, click, click, click, click, click because there's just so much, there's so much stuff. So yeah, I'd say those things, you know, we've got specific places that are really good for insects. So I'd say if you like them, come in the spring and summer, and then, but if you like a huge numbers of ducks to look at then, yeah, autumn and winter is a good time to come. 

Kirstin: 

Brilliant, that's super. What a fascinating insight into how a reserve is managed and we want to say a huge thank you to Jeremy and Sally who have taken time out of their busy day to give us an insight into the work that goes on here at Loch Leven NNR. And if you haven't been, we definitely recommend a visit. 

Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this special episode. National Nature Reserves are some of the best places for everyone to enjoy the magic and beauty of Scotland's nature. To find a reserve near you and for more ways to connect with Scotland's natural world, go to nature.scot