Y.E.T.I : Beauty from the East

The purple iridescence to male tufted ducks heads, black and white plumage and bright yellow eye make them a striking if overlooked species.

With freezing north-easterlies and regular snow flurries over the past few days have felt like some of the coldest this winter, with spring weather still seemingly weeks away, the focus remained on birds. The last few days have certainly produced a good diversity of wildfowl with mute swan, white-fronted goose, pink-footed goose, greylag goose, canada goose, barnacle goose, brent goose, shelduck, mallard, gadwall, pintail, shoveler, wigeon, teal, pochard, red-crested pochard, tufted duck, eider, common scoter, goldeneye, smew, goosander and mandarin making up a cool 23 species dotted around the region.

Male Chinese Teal, Yuan Yang or Mandarin are fantastic looking birds.

Despite being a feral species, mandarin or Yuan Yang (in Chinese) must be one of the most visually impressive species found in the wild in Britain. As its name suggests mandarins can be found in eastern China as well as south eastern Siberia, Russia, Korea and Japan. The name mandarin was given to the duck by 17th century English merchants who thought it superior over other duck species. Mandarins can be seen depicted in oriental prints, porcelain, textiles, pottery, embroidery and sculpture, usually below peony, as an emblem of spring and love.

Male Mandarins have elaborate mid-tertial feathers, which look like sails.

The earliest mention of this species in England, which at the time was widely known as The galericulata or Chinese teal, was shortly before 1745, at Richmond Green, Surrey. This was a small introduction in the gardens of Sir Mathew Decker the director of the East India Company, who imported numerous Asian species of flora and fauna to Britain. The first breeding record was in 1834 in the grounds of the Zoological Society of London. The species subsequently become popular within collections and eventually spread away from these to form free flying feral colonies.

Female roe deer, the anal "tush" (the white tuft on the rear) is a distinctive feature of females.

Temporary associations of roe deer are common in arable landscapes during the winter.

It was also good to have a look at the seabird colonies this week which are starting to build up again prior to the breeding season, with gannets and fulmar back on the cliffs. Sporadic guillemot invasions are also becoming more frequent. A couple of checks of some of the local badger setts has revealed activity levels increasing which is quite typical, with territorial behaviour quite high around March, as animals tend to mate between February and May. Cubs are predominantly born around February. This species shows delayed implantation of the egg, hence why mating occurs after births and subsequent births occur so late after mating. Another species which shows delayed implantation is the roe deer, a species which is highly visible at this time of year, when vegetation cover is low.