Blogs

Hello everyone. I hope you have had a good couple of weeks?

This week's blog is dedicated to the return of our wonderful migrant species to the reserve. Those remarkable birds that travel great distances to spend the winter on our reserve, and for that I feel honored.

Only 2 or 3 weeks ago, during our last Wetland Birds Survey (WEBS), I came away disappointed at the amount of wildfowl that had returned to the reserve. Just a small handful of birds had made their way back to us, and most of the others we had seen so far, whooper swans for example, had simply passed overhead or stopped very briefly to catch their breath.

However, I was not concerned at this lack of birds because I knew deep down that slowly but surely they would start to appear...and they have!

This morning, over our Sunday morning tea break, I saw the first male hen harrier of the year and jumped up from my seat shouting "hen harrier, look, over there..." (Hen harriers are quite common in this area but only tend to come down to hunt on the reserve in the winter, as food becomes scarce up on the moorlands). The harrier then proceeded to flush (a 'technical' term for scare) all of the snipe from the Aird Meadow, which turned out to be somewhere between 60-70 birds, which was quite a sight on it's own!

After that, we began looking at the ducks as I'd noticed that for the first time this season, there were quite a number of them on the Aird Meadow. You get the best view from up in the tower so that's where we went. From there we could see a whole array of birds - wigeon, goldeneyes, pochard, goosanders, mallards, tufted ducks and mute swans, plus one lonely great crested grebe in winter plumage. There were also 13 cormorants all crowded onto our single surviving raft.

It was great to be able to spend some time looking at them all again, and refreshing my memory about what their distinguishing features are.

Although no whooper swans were on the Aird Meadow today, there were 18 there yesterday and there is a strong chance they will now be on the Barr Loch, as that's where they usually prefer to be.

When it comes to the next WEBS count, I know i won't be disappointed!

Welcome back one and all!

Just a quick post this week. Everything is in full swing at the reserve as always with it having been half term in Scotland, but today seemed somewhat quieter, no doubt people were put off by the wind and rain. However, we at Lochwinnoch do not allow ourselves to be dissuaded by such things - rain, pah! Gale force winds - no problem! And just to prove that weather means nothing to us here at Lochwinnoch, today Mike (our information officer) was able to find all eight of our Wildlife Challenge species for October from inside the building - that's including the autumn special of goldcrest plus blackbird, goldfinch, starling, redwing, an oak tree, mute swan and goldeneye.

We even had some weatherproof Cub Scouts going pond dipping and bug hunting and they had a brilliant time - if they can do it, you can too!

Enjoy the rest of this week and the lead up to 'Feed the Birds Day' on Sunday 26th Oct.

Paula

Well, as many of you I'm sure will have seen or experienced, it absolutely poured with rain this week, causing all sorts of floods and chaos in the local area. At one point it felt as if the Barr Loch and Aird Meadow were going to become one huge loch, as the road seemed to disappear and became replaced with water!

For me the week started on Wednesday, with a fabulous team of BTCV (British Trust for Conservation Volunteers) volunteers helping us with some of our meadow management. Removing the cut material from the SSSI (see last weeks blog for more info) and tidying up the bits the tractor couldn't reach.

I then headed down to Dumfries for a meeting and site visit to Mersehead reserve. For those of you that haven't been, I can thoroughly recommend it. What a great place. A really friendly and knowledgeable team of staff and volunteers, and a fabulous reserve. Mersehead has a great mixture of habitats, from woods to wetlands to farmland and finally beach (it falls right onto the Solway Firth). Many of the geese have started to appear there now and the sounds they made were amazing, and oddly calming. The weather held out for us while we were touring the site, but shortly after we went inside, the heavens opened.

Overnight the wind was howling and the rain seemed to be coming down in sheets - we were soaked just stepping from the B&B to the car! Whilst trying to get to Ken-Dee Marshes to help out with some of the practical work they are doing, 4 of our colleagues cars gave up (from flooded engines) and sadly we had to head back home. However, there can always be some good taken from every situation. On the way back home we followed part of the Galloway Kite Trail and saw 5 red kites soaring low over the fields at the side of the road - absolutely spectacular birds, using their tails like rudders and barely moving their wings!

So, back in Lochwinnoch and it was a similar story with the flooding, although our reserve car managed to make it through successfully. The water level on the meadow had increased dramatically and the ducks, snipe and heron were all congregating around the 'new' edges. The pond dipping area had overflowed and the trails were quite inaccessible in places. But, once again, it was not all bad news. This is a wetland after all and along with the ducks and herons making the most of the increased area of water, we were lucky enough to see an otter several times on Saturday afternoon. Fantastic! And some of our visitors at the time were lucky enough to catch a glimpse too - goes to show you never can tell!

      For those of you who are unfamiliar with the reserve, there are 4 main stages to our Aird Meadow habitat management. This may pale in comparison with other sites that spend a vast amount of time on creating and improving habitats for wildlife, but rest assured, we are not lazy, it's just that the majority of the reserve is water with which you can do very little, but which is naturally a fantastic gathering point for a wide variety of wintering wildfowl.

So, the 4 stages for Aird Meadow management are:

1. Farmer comes along to cut the drier parts of the meadow using tractor and topper, leaving the cut material behind.

2. BTCV volunteer team come and do the 'neatening', which involves moving the cut material off of the SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest, which covers much of the reserve) and using brushcutters to trim the bits the farmer couldn't reach.

3. A piece of machinery called a Softrak (which exerts lower pressure on the ground than a human foot) comes and cuts the wetter bits of the meadow (as much as the water levels will allow).

4. One or two Highland Cattle come and spend a few weeks at the reserve, keeping the meadow nicely grazed through the winter.

      This whole process is carried out so that in the springtime, there is a great place for lapwings and other waders to come and make their nests. A mixture of short and long grass, plus muddy patches that are good for finding food.

      Well, Friday saw us complete phase 1, the weather stayed dry for us and the meadow was cut! Excellent! And with it came a whole host of interesting sightings, including 2 buzzards sitting in the middle of the meadow, 2 kestrels hunting overhead, 2 ravens circling above and 2 carrion crows looking for lunch (not sure why all in twos!). Stages 2, 3 & 4 will begin to progress in the next few weeks, so i will keep you updated.

     We also had our first whooper swans of the year this week, 1 on Monday 29th and then 4 adults on Wednesday. These beautiful birds are one of my favourite winter migrants and can sometimes come in quite large groups, I have seen almost 40 on the reserve before! I will keep you updated on the progress of this years visitors and write a bit more about whooper swans next week.

      Finally, on Saturday we held our first 'Young Volunteers Day' during which 11 keen volunteers, between the ages of 12 and 18 came to the reserve to find out more about what volunteering involves. As it was the first session, we planned the activities for the day, but in the future much of the planning will be done by the group itself. The day was great, the group were great sports and went along with our plans despite the appauling weather and we look forward to working with them more in the future.

Paula

September weekend for some can be a bit depressing, the end of September is a signal to many that the summer is over and winter is almost here. I, on the other hand, see it in a completely different light. By this point, autumn - my favourite season - is in full swing, and at the reserve this weekend we celebrated that with our visitors by holding an 'Amazing Autumn' event. This involved fungus hunts, creation of habitat piles for mammals and insect to hibernate in, looking at the spectacular autumn colours and thinking ahead about all of the wonderful things that the winter can bring.

The fungus hunts are always my favourite, this year we found about 20 species, and of those about 15 were new to me. The visitors loved them, especially the kids, who enjoyed the opportunity to explore parts of the reserve that they had never seen before without being told to 'stick to the path'. Some of the highlights were The Miller, Glistening Ink Cap, Sulphur Tuft, Common Earthball and a giant Birch Polypore. At one point we convinced ourselves that one of the species we found could be the Destroying Angel - one of the most poisonous toadstools in the UK - however, after the initial panic had subsided and after careful examination, it turned out to be a Common White Inocybe (still very poisonous, but not quite Destroying Angel level!)

The reserve was also featured on BBC Radio Scotland on Saturday morning, on their 'Out of Doors' programme, and Mark Stephen and I were talking about autumn, migration and the subtle changes that can be seen on the reserve during this wonderful season. If you missed this and would like to listen again, you can do so by visiting: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074hjr and selecting the programme from 27th September.

To finish i would like to say make the most of this wonderful season, get out, look for mushrooms, do something to help wildlife over the winter, take in the amazing colours of the leaves and berries and above all, have fun!

 Paula

Hello!

My apologies for not posting a blog last week, time sort of ran away from me with the preparations for the second-hand booksale, and Zul's (reserve manager) departure for his South African sabbatical. Anyway, enough of that and on to this week, and what a great week it has been!

Last week we had several sightings of an Osprey and today a Kingfisher flitted past the feeding station, (whilst people were actually around to see it - it normally only seems to come when the visitor centre is empty), but by far my highlight of this week was my close encounter with a family of wood mice.

On Friday, after some hectic book-sale preparations, one of our volunteers came in the the visitor centre and said to me, "You have to come and see this". As you can imagine, I was immediately intrigued so followed her to the picnic area. What I saw amazed me. A family of about 6 very young wood mice were crawling all around the vegetated edge of the picnic area, totally oblivious to human presence. The adult, I was told, had already scarpered, knowing better than to hang around near such large, aggresive predators as us humans, but the youngsters had not yet learnt to avoid our noisy, clumsy ways and were quite happy to continue foraging for food.

I immediately ran to get my camera, convinced they would be gone by the time I got back - I was wrong. I knelt down, slowly moving the camera closer and closer to one mouse in particular, but I needn't have worried as it proceeded to scuttle underneath my camera and started sniffing my camera strap to see if it was worth eating. Quickly realsing that it wasn't, it scurried back to the vegetation and began climbing up a very small branch to look for something more appetising. Although agile, it still didn't quite have its balance, and kept plopping off the branch on to the leaves below, to cries of "how cute!" and "awwww".

Its other brothers and sister were less curious, but still very visible and one sat in the same spot and ate something obviously very tasty for about 5 minutes.

One of the regular Friday volunteer team got a small handful of seed, and sat very patiently with his hand next to the area in which the family seemed to be congregating, and at one point we all gasped as a curious mouse put its tiny paw on his hand, but there must have been something more interesting to nibble as that was as close as it got.

 We could have sat there all day, but duty called and we left the family to it. I checked yesterday and today to see if there was any sign of them, but they had moved on to pastures new.

I personally have never seen any wild creature behave in this way, always assuming that it was instinctual to avoid predators - nature, not nurture - but this experience would suggest otherwise. I would be fascinated to hear of anyone else's encounters with mammals of any kind, so please do let me know!

As always:

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

Paula

The votes are in, they have been counted and verified and the winning entries from each category are as follows:

Category: BIRDS

1st Place: Heron in Flight by Robert Beattie

2nd Place: Goldfinch by Marie Crum

3rd Place: Thirsty Duck by Raymond Watson

Category: WILDLIFE

1st Place: Grey Squirrel by William Blair

2nd Place: Common Blue Damselfly by John Alexander

3rd Place: Looking for Lunch Too by Shirley Adamson

Category: PEOPLE

1st Place: Toddler and Tiddler by Catherine Frew

2nd Place: I Spy by Raymond Watson

3rd Place: Enjoying Art by Zul Bhatia

Category: LANDSCAPE

1st Place: After the Rain by Robert Beattie

2nd Place: Barr Loch from Path by Daniel Ferguson

3rd Place: Pond View by Douglas McKnight

Category: UNDER 15'S

1st Place: Grasshopper in Grass

2nd Place: Swan Drying Wings

3rd Place: Blue tit and Friend

Congratulations to the winners and many thanks to all of this years participants. A full list of each participants placing in the competition is available on request. Prizes were awarded for first and second place with certificates for 3rd placed entries.

Paula

So, we've noticed at the reserve over the last few weeks a big increase in the number of house sparrows at the feeding station, which is fantastic for us as the house sparrow is not really seen at our feeders very often. However, it did make us wonder why? We have had up to 40, which certainly is a big increase from the one or two we've had all summer. So we got to researching to find out more about these underrated birds and came across Dominic Couzens book 'The Secret Life of Garden Birds' and it turns out that house sparrows take holidays! Yes, every August house sparrows will leave the territory that they stay very faithful to for the rest of the year and will venture anything up to a few kilometres to find the best spots with the ripest seeds, usually farmland crops but in our case our well stocked feeding station is appearing to be very attractive to them. As Dominic suggests "If sparrows ever let their hair down, August is the time, next month they will return, well fed and refreshed, and settle down to their sedentary lives once more." Who'd have thought it?

Later this week i will announce the results of the Lochwinnoch Photography Comnpetition, so watch this space.

Happy Monday!

Paula

Dominic Couzen's book 'The Secret Lives of Garden Birds' is available from www.rspb.org.uk/mall/rspb for £14.99

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

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