Blogs

Hello again, hope you have all had a good week? This week at the reserve has certainly been a very interesting one, both in terms of wildlife and visitors.

On Wednesday, the weather was appauling, and not ideal to welcome the RSPB's board of directors to the reserve! However, they all came very well prepared for the West of Scotland and were quite happy to be out and about in the rain. We explored the reserve and Castle Semple's visitor centre as many of them have never been to the area before. Much to everyone's surprise we saw a beautiful kingfisher on the small pond at the front of the centre (not very common to see it here!), and to encourage it in the future a new post has been erected in the pond should it ever wish to come back to fish. The red-crested pochard still was visible without even crossing the road, a new tick for many of the visitors that day. All in all a very good visit!

On Saturday morning, we had our annual Bird Ringing Demonstration, run by Dave Grant - fully qualified BTO trained A-ringer - and his assistants Kevin, Julie and Emma (his daughter). We had prepared the nets and potential ringing sites the night before and were greeted by mist the following morning, so the insect movement was limited and to start with there was very little bird activity. However, we did have one very surprising bird to ring - a tawny owl. Now, this was not caught using traditional ringing methods, but was found by Kevin, stunned at the roadside on his way to the reserve in the morning. Suspecting it to be injured, we were prepared to take the bird to Hessilhead Wildlife Rescue, but on closer inspection, the bird appeared to be in good health and Dave was happy to continue with the ringing process. The bird turned out to be female (this can be told by the weight of the bird as well as feather patterns) and the participants from the event were amazed to see such a beautiful bird up close and personal. Her talons were not to be messed with, and we were informed that one very famous bird ringer from the sixties lost an eye to a tawny owl! However, she was very patient with us and flew well when released. It's only through these different types of events that we can be so lucky as to see a spectacular and hard to see bird as this, so thanks to Dave and his team for a great event!

Coming up this weekend  (29th and 30th Aug) we have our second Bat & Moth Night, jointly run by ourselves and the Clyde Bat Group. Moth highlights this week have included black rustic and broad boardered yellow underwing. Also, a surefire sign that autumn is coming is the appearance of the canary shouldered thorn and sallow moths, two very distinctive autumn moths. Please get in touch with us should you wish to book on to the event and visit http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/l/lochwinnoch/events.asp for more information.

Until next time,

Paula

If you would like to subscribe to the Lochwinnoch Blog, use the RSS feed http://blogs.rspb.org.uk/lochwinnoch/rss.aspx and you will be alerted every time there is a new post. We also welcome any feedback, so please do feel free to leave comments.

Contact the reserve in two ways:

Email: Lochwinnoch@rspb.org.uk or ring 01505842663

Good morning all, and welcome to the Lochwinnoch Blog! The name is a bit dull at the moment and i'm hoping we can jazz it up a little, so if you have any more inspiring/exciting/interesting titles, leave me a comment and you never know, yours could be the one we pick!

I'm hoping this blog will give you a good insight into life on the reserve, both in terms of wildlife and people and the day to day running of a place such as Lochwinnoch. As many of you may already know, we have a huge variety of volunteers, so i'm hoping i'll be able to get one or two of them to contribute something to the blog.

News from the reserve this week:

The photography competition has just kicked off, with all competitors photos on display now in the visitor centre. There are some wonderful pictures this year and there are over 100 photos to choose from, so please come and vote for your favourites in each of the categories, any time between today (18th Aug) until Sun 31st Aug. The winners will be announced on here.

Also, there has been a drake red-crested pochard in eclipse plumage, quite an unusual sighting which has drawn in a number of birdwatchers. Visit http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/r/redcrestedpochard/index.asp for more information.

Now, just to clarify, eclipse plumage is often seen in ducks and it is where the ducks moult into duller plumage outside of the breeding season. Some birds may stay in eclipse for a few months, whereas some may stay in eclipse until the following spring, where they will once again moult into their spectacular breeding plumage.

Coming up this weekend, we have our Bird Ringing Demonstration (on Sat 23rd Aug), which proved to be very popular last year with great close up views of blue tit, great tit, wren, goldcrest, willow warbler, robins and a treecreeper. To find out more information, get in touch with the reserve using the contact details below.

I'll also be at the Largs Regatta on Sat 23rd and Sun 24th Aug all day, so pop along and say hello and find out more about the RSPB's marine campaign.

Well, thats all for now, but we'll catch up next week some time with all of the latest news from the reserve.

Thanks for reading,

Paula

If you would like to subscribe to the Lochwinnoch Blog, use the RSS feed http://blogs.rspb.org.uk/lochwinnoch/rss.aspx and you will be alerted every time there is a new post. We also welcome any feedback, so please do feel free to leave comments.

Contact the reserve in two ways:

Email: Lochwinnoch@rspb.org.uk or ring 01505842663