Ray Collier Country Diary - Mandarin Ducks

Mandarin Ducks - 22nd October 2007

The drake mandarin has an amazing and almost bizarre plumage which makes it one of the most striking and beautiful ducks in the world. Its head is purple-green with a copper-tinged crest and the white eye-stripe contrasts with the orange chestnut feathers that hang down from its neck. It has a greenish-brown back and white underparts but the most striking features are the two very large wing feathers. These rise up from either side of its back and look like miniature golden fans or sails. In contrast, the plumage of the female is drab although, close to, the mixture of grey, olive brown and sepia feathering is attractive. After the breeding season, like most ducks, feathers are moulted and the new ones grown - a stage called eclipse which leaves both male and female looking alike, although the male can be identified by its pink beak and yellower legs. The eclipse period is a particularly dangerous time for ducks because, with the loss of wing feathers, they temporarily cannot fly. A native of eastern Asia, the mandarin has long been very popular in wildfowl collections but escapees have bred in the wild as feral birds. It was admitted to the official British list of birds in 1971 although some people still regard them as feral birds. In the 1960s, the main colony in Scotland was on the River Tay in the city of Perth. However, there were reports from further north such as Loch Lomond and Inverness in the late 1970s and they have even been recorded as far north as Orkney. These single birds were thought to be from local collections but gradually the records increased and in the early 1990s they started breeding just south of Inverness. Their early homes were natural holes in trees, then they took over nest boxes designed for goldeneyes or tawny owls. There are now about 10 pairs near Inverness in Strathnairn and, more recently, a few pairs are nesting in Strathspey where they seem to be expanding their range. Despite the spectacular plumage of the drakes, mandarins can be surprisingly secretive during the breeding season. The males will feed early in the morning and late in the afternoon and the rest of the time they spend resting, often perched up in a tree where the leaves conceal them. For the critical period of incubation the female only briefly comes off the nest to feed and drink whilst the male sits on the top of the nest box or tree hole for most of the day and night. The tiny ducklings are so light that they almost float down when they leave the nest and are taken to the nearest water, which may be some distance from the nest site. If the brood of ducklings is disturbed, the female will perform a behaviour called "injury feigning". The bird will run along the ground with one wing trailing, as if injured, and when the predator follows her and is some way from the ducklings she flies back to them. As with many other hole-nesting birds, they are taken by such animals as pine marten and stoat and ducklings are taken on the water by large fish, otters and mink. It seems likely that the number of breeding pairs will continue to rise as there are now so many nest boxes being erected. This, hopefully, will lead to their range expanding in the Highlands.

Ray Collier Country Diary - Cockles

Cockles - 15th October 2007

The sea-shore along the east coast of the Highlands gives an insight into the richness of the area’s wildlife - especially the tide lines with their accumulation of sea weeds and shells. Rock pools often teem with wildlife, despite the fact that they have to contend with varying degrees of salinity from the daily tides and rain. These include starfish, sticklebacks and small crabs and they are frequently preyed on by birds. Some birds such as crows and gulls, have developed a very special technique for opening live shells such as mussels. They prise the shell off a rock and then fly up and simply drop the mussel, shattering it on the very rocks where it lived. The birds simply pick up the fleshy parts. There are indications that the numbers of birds obtaining food by this method are increasing as they copy others. Life in rock pools is fraught with problems because of predators. Some animals resort to burying themselves in sand and mud banks to avoid being eaten. One of these is the cockle and their number depends on the exposure of the banks. Fewer cockles are to be found on the exposed shores where the sand and mud is moved around by wave motion than more stable sheltered shores where finer particles of sand and mud accumulate. Cockles are able to avoid clogging by sand and mud particles and obtain fresh, oxygenated supplies of clean sea water from above to breath when the tide is in. The rounded shells are symmetrical, heart-shaped and have strongly-pronounced ribs that are dark in colour and contrast with the main part of the shell. The ribs and concentric annual growth lines around the shell indicate its age. The fleshy part forms a dark brown hinge, or ligament. with a large muscle known as a foot. It propels itself by bending and straightening this foot. This is one of the commonest of the shellfish, sometimes occurring in very large numbers and rich beds can contain 10,000 cockles per square yard although the numbers in the Highlands are much lower. One bed in southern Britain has been estimated to contain 460 million cockles. This abundance has caused conservation problems, especially with one of its main predators - the attractive and large oystercatcher. These waders have perfected a system of finding the cockles. It has a long beak that enables it to find the shellfish under the sand and mud. The problem is that a single oystercatcher can eat 300 cockles in a day and there are an estimated 40,000 pairs in Britain and a wintering population of 340,000. Fortunately, cockles are not the oystercatcher’s sole source of food! The cockle is also able to replace numbers readily as each has both male and female reproductive organs. Humans are another main predator and cockles have varied from being a staple diet in the past to a delicacy that can now be purchased from shops in the Highlands. Even with such large numbers there is always the chance of over-exploitation and commercial gathering is controlled to sustain the population. At one time, licences were issued to kill oystercatchers because of their supposed threat to cockle numbers but fortunately this is now in the past. Cockles are famous in the song "Cockles and Mussels", the earliest known published version of which was in London in 1884. Although the song is the unofficial anthem of Dublin and generally regarded as Irish, it was, in fact, written and composed by a Scotsman, James Yorkston.

Ray Collier Country Diary - Mallards Ducks

Mallard Ducks - 8th October 2007


The male mallard are easy to recognise as for most of the year they have
bottle green heads, yellow beaks and white neck rings. The breasts are
purple brown with mainly grey bodies and black curly upper tail feathers.
As with many other ducks the female, from a distance, is dull brown but at
close quarters the mottling of light and dark brown is very attractive. The
reason for this marked plumage difference is that the males play no part in
the egg incubation as this is left entirely to the females and their plumage
makes sure they blend into the background of the open nests. Once incubation
is under way the males will hang around for a while and then form groups
with other males. Occasionally the males will help out with the guarding of
the ducklings but normally this falls to the females.
At this time of the year mallard will often become very tame and any small
ponds in villages or the River Ness in Inverness will have such tame birds
that willingly come for food such as bread. These are likely to be locally
bred ducks and interbreeding with birds that have gone feral from
collections often lead to varying colours. Elsewhere in the Highlands the
situation is often quite different and mallard that have bred on some of the
hill lochs are often quite wild and very wary even when the weather forces
them to the coast. So the birds in the firths around Inverness at the
moment are of a very mixed source as, although some were bred in the
Highlands, many of them have come some distance. For example whilst some
mallard remain in Iceland all the year round many come to Britain for the
milder winters and large numbers come from northwest Russia, Scandinavia and
the Baltic states. What confuses matters even more is that very large
numbers are reared on estates throughout Britain for shooting. This large
bird is the most widespread duck in the world and where it did not occur
naturally, such as in Australia and New Zealand, it has been introduced.
This was a favourite duck for people running the old decoys where birds were
attracted along a series of pipes. This was making use of the natural
curiosity of mallard in that when a dog, appropriately called a decoy dog,
ran in and out of sight the birds were attracted along the pipe until the
end was closed and the birds caught. Originally this was for eating but
latterly solely for ringing and over the years tens of thousands of mallard
were taken in this way. The best places around Inverness to see "wild"
mallard are in any of the firths as annual counts over the Inner Moray Firth
regularly total over 4,000 birds and there are often concentrations of birds
such as over 500 on Loch Eye. We often refer to mallard as ducks and
drakes for the females and males but historically this is confusing as
originally the word malard or maulard was of Norman origin and it only
applied to the drake. In the old days the female was called the wild duck
and only the drake was the mallard until Pennant adopted the name mallard
for both sexes. The Gaelic name is Lach riabhach which means wild duck.
Other Scots names include common duck, moss duck, mire duck and muir duck.
With many people foretelling a harsh winter to come perhaps we should turn
to the old folk lore about the colour of the mallard's wishbone with a dark
one foretelling a harsh winter and a pale one indicating a mild winter.
The photograph shows three drakes up-ending for food in shallow water