Ah the dog days of summer, schools are going back and a glance outside your window for a large part of the week would have seen you greeted with wind and rain, a sure sign that autumn is not too far away. A glance outside the viewing windows at the reserve visitor centre recently would have had you wondering whether you were in China or the west of Scotland in late summer as a mandarin duck, a drake in eclipse plumage, fed alongside a male pheasant on the bank of the Lochall Channel.
The mandarin duck, present at the channel from the 10 August, is an introduced Asian species to western Europe and escapes from wildfowl collections have resulted in a population of c.3,000 pairs now nesting in the UK mainly in SE England. A few isolated populations of released and escaped birds breed in Scotland, the nearest to Lochwinnoch being in Borders and Argyll though a pair have bred successfully this year at Loch Lomond. Indeed with a world population of only c.66,000 birds, mainly in China and Korea, the 7,000 or so birds in the UK are around a tenth of this total World population of this delightful small duck.
The Barr Loch was the scene of a record breaking showing by osprey when no fewer than three were seen together over the loch on 9 August - unsurprisingly the highest ever count for the reserve and indeed for Renfrewshire. The fortunate observer, Marc Campbell, managed to capture an image of all three birds in the same photograph for posterity. This was the undoubted highlight in what was a good week for raptor sightings on the reserve with in addition peregrine, kestrel, sparrowhawk and buzzard all seen.
Angus Murray