The park is home to, amongst others, swans, geese, rooks, jackdaws, coots, moor hens, grey squirrels, otters, and badgers.

Three tiny fluffy moor hen chicks, 'a sooty brood', cheeped loudly and paddled for shelter beneath a pile of brush wood.

Water birds such as cormorants, white-breasted water hen, moor hen, jacanas, river tern, ringed plover, sand piper, and green and purple herons are quite common.

But it was a moor hen that stepped out of the reeds and into the water, flirting its white tail, dipping its head, pecking at the surface with its bright red beak.

From hides we watched skimming house martins, skulking moor hens, skidding coots, a hovering kestrel, soaring skylarks, mud-probing greenshanks and fast-pecking black bellied dunlins.

Enlivened by birds - moor hens afloat, a heron in flight - and the occasional figure, they are charming but in their own way are every bit as dutiful as the genre scenes.

The loch was a site where swans, moor hens, and other waterfowl nested and as a site within the old Barony of Trabboch it was an area used for hunting and fishing by the laird.

Smoothness of surface and reduction of form, two hallmarks of modernism, are evident in Pompon's "Moor Hen" (1923), whose rounded volumes and streamlined shape add up to a sleek, Minimalist version of a shore bird.

On one scrap of paper Amsel had tried to work himself up a name out of Steppenhuhn (moor hen): Stephun, Steppuh, Steputat, Stepius, Steppat, Stopoteit, Stappanowski, Stoppka, Steffen.

Today, lagopus lagopus scoticus is in a heap of trouble.

It is usually classified as a subspecies of the Willow Grouse, but is sometimes considered to be a separate species Lagopus scoticus.

RED GROUSE Lagopus lagopus scoticus.

In Scotland, deer stalking and red grouse (Lagopus lagopus scoticus) hunting occurs sustainably because hunting licences are owned by the landholder.

In the book, the Old Man of Lochnagar sinks into a loch, where he goes haggis-hunting with "lagopus Scoticus," the "Scottish freshwater variant of Neptune."