Spring on Arthur's Seat

 We've seen signs of Spring over the past few weeks, but this week it has really felt like Spring at last. We had a lovely walk round Arthur's Seat today. Early on, the air was slightly misty, which made for atmospheric views.

Later the sun came full out 

The gorse is beautiful at the moment. We looked down onto Duddingston Loch with our binoculars,looking for nesting Grey Herons, but we could only see three nests, compared to the twenty or so there used to be years ago. It's still a lovely view down to the Loch though. 

The Jackdaws are still around in good numbers though. 

We looked for frogspawn in Dunsapie Loch, but didn't find any, perhaps we're too early

Linlithgow Loch

 We had a lovely weekend visit to Linlithgow, just a short train ride away from Edinburgh. Linlithgow is famous for the Palace, which was the birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots. It's also famous for the Loch, which is a great place for birdlife and offers a lovely circular walk, which is what we did on Saturday. 

One of the first birds we saw on the Loch was this male Tufted Duck, looking very smart in full breeding plumage. There were lots of Tufted Ducks on the Loch in fact.

Several Cormorants were hanging around the edges of the Loch, here are just two of them

 They were much closer to shore than is often the case. Usually when we visit the Cormorants are all found on one of the islands in the loch.

The birds we were really hoping to see were the Great Crested Grebes, which breed on the loch. This is the time of year when they start their impressive courtship dances, and in fact someone stopped us on our walk to say that the grebes were in fact dancing. Sadly, we missed their dance, though we were lucky enough to see about six of them. No decent photos of these wonderful birds, unfortunately. 

The Palace seems to have been half covered in scaffolding for several years now, but it's still an impressive sight

The Blackthorn is out in bloom, which is lovely to see

 

Crocuses in Full Bloom

Crocuses are a lovely sign of Spring and are currently in full bloom in Edinburgh. These photos are from one of the city's most famous crocus displays in The Meadows. 

Winter Birds at Musselburgh

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

view from Musselburgh, looking across to Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh

Yesterday we had a lovely visit to Musselburgh, in East Lothian, a short bus journey away from Edinburgh. It's always a favourite place for birdwatching, especially at this time of year when the winter birds are still here and the summer birds are due to arrive. Plus, the resident Skylarks are starting to sing. We were lucky to hear probably three Skylarks singing high above us and even saw one of them, a small silhouette against the clouds. 

Meanwhile on the River Esk we saw a large number of Canada Geese

along with a few Goldeneyes, the males trying to impress the females, by throwing back their heads. I'm not sure whether the female in the photo below is impressed or not, but the male is certainly putting on a show.. 

Walking further, along the Firth of Forth, we saw several birds out on the water, the most impressive being this male Long Tailed Duck

We also visited the hides on the Lagoons, where we were impressed by the numbers of Wigeon gathered at the far side of the lagoons, and were also pleased to get some photos of this Curlew that came quite close to the hide. 

Along the Union Canal

Yesterday was the Edinburgh Canal Festival, which takes place every year at sites along the Union Canal. So we walked along the canal for a while and visited the festival itself. 

Parts of the towpath are lined with a variety of flowering plants, including Dog Roses, which are in full bloom just now 

all these flowers attract insects, though nowhere near as many as in previous years (the decline of insect populations has been chillingly evident over the past couple of years). We were pleased to find this Double Orange Spot moth 

and these hoverflies - a Melangyna sp on the left and a Eupeoides sp on the right.  

Plus this beetle, which I think is a species of Donacia (possibly Donacia simplex?) if you know for certain that I'm wrong, please feel free to tell me so in the comments!

We also popped into the community garden in Harrison Park

where a good number of bees were busy amongst all the flowers.

Drama at Figgate Park

 We had a lovely walk round Edinburgh's Figgate Park yesterday. The main feature of the park is the Figgate Pond, which is home to a number of water birds including Mute Swans, Mallards and Canada geese, all of which have bred there this year. As all the parent birds are keen to protect their offspring from attacks from predators, they can sometimes become quite aggressive.

We were watching the Canada Goose family, with their five appealing goslings

when suddenly one of the parents rushed away, followed by all the goslings

It didn't take long to find out what had caused this, as a Mute Swan had decided to chase the other adult Canada Goose

This chase went on for quite a long time, though oddly, at one time the swan chased the goose towards the swan's own nest on the island in the middle of the pond! 

The Mute Swans only had one cygnet. 

It seems likely that there would have been more cygnets to start with, so this family may feel a particular pressure to guard their remaining offspring. 

There were a number of mallards on the pond, including this family with small ducklings.

 

We were delighted to see several damselflies, though mostly further away from the water than we would have expected to find them! There were at least two species, the Blue Tailed Damselfly 

and Common Blue Damselfly (I think! If anyone disagrees and thinks its actually an Azure Damselfly, please let me know in the comments!)

There were a good number of Speckled Wood butterflies flying around.

We saw a few hoverflies, though not as many as we might have hoped. It was particularly nice to get such a good view of this Footballer Hoverfly (Helophilus pendulus)

Arthur's Seat

We have had a lot of rain in Edinburgh recently, the Water of Leith has burst its banks in a few places and swans and other birds have had their nests swept away by the floodwaters.  West Princes Street Gardens and Inch Park are closed due to flooding. Many roads have been made impassable. Yesterday, the rain stopped and allowed us to have a lovely walk around Arthur's Seat (we guessed that this would be guaranteed to be fairly dry as it is such high ground). 

The lower reaches of the hill are beautiful with Cow Parsley at the moment

We were delighted to see lots of toad tadpoles in Dunsapie Loch near the top of the hill, obviously some wildlife has benefitted from the wet weather! 

Two Grey Herons were hanging around the pond, but we're not sure whether they would eat toad tadpoles, as the tadpoles are known to be unpalatable to predators. 

Sadly, we couldn't see many nests in the heronry down on the islands on Duddingston Loch. Around thirty pairs of Grey Herons used to nest there, but we could only see evidence of three nests (admittedly there could be more hidden in amongst the foliage, but normally you'd see herons at most of the nests). If you click on the photo below to enlarge it, you may see a heron close to the centre of the picture.

It was much easier to see this Jackdaw at its nest site, a nice cosy home in amongst the stones of the wall! The young Jackdaws were making a lot of noise as they demanded to be fed.

Lots of Jackdaw nest on Arthur's Seat, and they're very commonly seen! 

as are their larger relatives, the Carrion Crows 

 and the largest of the crow family, Ravens, though we didn't see any Ravens yesterday. 

There weren't a lot of insects around, but we did see a couple of Epistrophe eligans hoverflies

and this lovely cranefly, which I think is a Tiger Cranefly. 

Today it's been raining most of the day, so we were lucky with the weather for our walk yesterday. This volume of rain is very worrying for both people and wildlife.

Butterfly survey at Lauriston Farm

It's butterfly season again and I'm involved in butterfly surveys as I was last year. Butterfly surveys are only to be carried out in certain weather conditions: temperature above 17 degrees C if it is dull, above 13 degrees if the sun is out; no rain and not too much wind. Which makes it tricky to find a suitable day here in Edinburgh, which is renowned for not being particularly warm. Yesterday however was perfect and I enjoyed surveying the fields at Lauriston Farm, which I first surveyed last year. 

 

These fields are part of a rewilding agroecology project and it is amazing to see how the project is benefiting wildlife in the area. 

On yesterday's survey I recorded around 15 Orange Tip Butterflies, 2 Small Tortoiseshells

1 Speckled Wood and several Small White butterflies (all my actual results have been officially recorded).  

I was also pleased to see that many of the buttercups in the fields were hosting small flower beetles and solitary bees (sadly my photos didn't turn out). It's becoming rarer to find flower beetles these days, it used to be that most buttercups and dandelions held flower beetles, but not any more, so it was very nice to see the beetles here. I also saw a magnificent moth, some kind of hawkmoth, I think, but I didn't get a good look at it. 

There were lots of birds about, including a flock of around fifty House Martins with a few Swallows and a Swift, two Buzzards, a Reed Bunting, a Whitethroat, a small flock of Goldfinches, a flock of Jackdaws. A Roe Deer was browsing in one of the fields. 

**

I'm delighted to have a haiku published on the Shadow Pond Journal website, you can read it here.

Corstorphine Hill

 Yesterday was a lovely warm sunny day once the haar (sea mist) lifted. We walked round Corstophine Hill, always a favourite place. 

 

There was, as ever, plenty of flowers, insect life and birds. The speedwell (I'm not sure which species of speedwell...) is in full bloom at the moment 

as is the Cow Parsley 

while many dandelions have finished blooming and are already seeding

We saw a number of butterflies, including Orange Tips, the photos below are of female Orange Tips, only the males have the distinctive orange markings on their wings. The females can be identified by the markings on the underside of their lower wings

but less easy to tell apart from other white butterflies from their upper sides

Speckled Wood butterflies were flying around the wooded area of the hill 

We found this Agriotes sp click beetle

while on the dry path on the exposed part of the hill, we watched three species of solitary bees, two of which appeared to be nest parasites, this one, a type of blood bee, so called for its red markings

and this yellow and black striped bee, a species of Nomad cuckoo bee 

The nomad bees were flying around, looking for nests of other solitary bees that they could lay their eggs in, the other bees will then bring up the young of the nomad bees as though they were their own.

We saw a number of hoverflies, including this Batman Hoverfly (Myathropa florea)

Edinburgh Zoo takes up part of Corstorphine Hill and you can often see the Grevy's zebras at the top of the hill, which overlooks the African plains section of the zoo
 

Near the zoo, we saw this Willow Warbler, it was singing beautifully, which is how we could definitely identify it as a Willow Warbler, rather than the very similar looking Chiffchaff!