This week has been an amazing week for sightings on the reserve. This week I managed to see a pair of spotted flycatcher feeding their young while on one of our badger watches. This was truly a treat for the visitors as we were waiting patiently for the badgers to show. This is likely to be a second brood as they leave the UK in September.

This week we saw one adult and one badger cub on our badger watch. Other mammals include our roaming roe deer, grey squirrel and rabbits. I also took our badger watch visitors to our boardwalk with our bat detectors in hand at dusk of both pipistrelle and daubentons bats

We still have plenty of wildflowers blooming on the reserve including hedge woundwort, marsh woundwort, yellow flag iris, tormentil, oxeye daisy, black knapweed, common hogweed, broad-leaved willowherb, marsh hawk’s-beard, fox glove, herb robert, pink purslane, yellow pimpernel, water forget-me-not, meadowsweet, cow parsley, heath bedstraw, common cow wheat, slender St John’s wort, bush vetch, valerian and red campion. There are now huge numbers of brambles starting to ripen on the reserve. So the birds are now having a feast on the berries.

I put out a moth trap and got large yellow underwing, lesser yellow underwing and dark arches. For butterflies we have green veined white and dragonflies we have common hawker.

Moving onto our birds found on the reserve we have grey heron, grey wagtail, dipper, goosander, mallard and if you are lucky a kingfisher can all be found on the reserve. Sand martins and swallows can still be seen flying over the reserve it will not be long before they start their migration journey. Blue tit, great tit, siskin, long tailed tit, robin, wren, blackbird, song thrush and raven can all be seen within our woodlands.

Sightings off the reserve include a marsh harrier perching at Barr Loch, this was accompanied by an osprey. There have also been sightings of four black tailed godwits at Ballochmartin Bay.

Feel free to send in your local sightings to fallsofclyde@scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk.

Mike Butler – Falls of Clyde Seasonal Ranger, Scottish Wildlife Trust
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