Well it's high summer today in Edinburgh! The weather has been glorious, still and warm with endless blue skies. We went for a wonderful walk along the River Almond. There were butterflies everywhere, loads of orange tips (managed to catch one in the photo above too!) a few small tortoiseseshells, a peacock, a red admiral and lots of white butterflies.
The birds were singing beautifully. Along the open riverbanks, whitethroats sang their wonderful hurried warble and then launched themselves into the air for a short burst of flightsong. Willow warbler songs cascaded from the trees. Chiffchaffs, chaffinches, blackbirds and others sang in the woods.
The most wonderful bird along this stretch of the river though is the sandmartin. This is the most inland colony for them in Scotland and the sky was full of them! They are wonderfully aerobatic birds and very active, swooping into and out of their nestholes in the sand banks.
13 comments:
Dear Juliet, this just to tell you that yesterday morning, actually at around five p.m. at dawn I distinctly heard somewhere near my window, here in Venice, ( I live in an area without much vegetation except for a private, big park connected with Venice gas offices near the station ) for the first and only time A Woodpigeon, exactly the same cooing I had heard in England so many times:
coo-coo-cooccoo-coo etc. finishing with a single, brief coo.
Spring is spacing geographically.
Amazing. I thought they existed only in England!
Same in here..Sweden Gothenburg..
It´s wonderful to be outside...
thanks for sharing your nice photo...
Greetings
Khim
that orange tipped butterfly is enjoying the weather and birdsong too. great photo. have a wonderful weekend.
Fledglings are all over the place. :)
This is a great time of the year.
Ah only spring here...cold and wet spring. But the roses are blooming.
And I may be a bit slow with this but I just realized that it's probably common in your corner of the world to put the type of body of water first, then the name, where in the U.S we would say Almond River...
Cold here too ...brrr ... spring is "on hold"! Sounds great there!
Hello Maam J,
So wonderful to see the greenies around you. So calm & peaceful to look at.
Hope you a wonderful day.
x0x0
Jealous of your butterflies! We need them for our "I-Spy" books. Just Whites for us at the moment.
Basking weather here too, though.
What an interesting butterfly! I've never seen anything like it here! Thanks for visiting my blog (Down in the Hollow) today. I so appreciated your commenting. Have a great weekend! ~ksdoolittle
Scotland must be a gorgeous place. I've always wanted to visit.
Wonderful post and it sounds like you had a lovely walk. The Orange Tips look beautiful. The birding must be great thee at this time of year. Thanks for sharing your walk.
I have seen a red admiral here too. I love the spring with the birds, insects and the garden getting green. It puts a smile on my face and I can see it does yours too...Michelle
You make summer sound exciting. Not that it isn't; I really like the way you wrote that.
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