River Almond

We went on a lovely walk today through Cammo Country Park and along the River Almond to the sand martin colony. The weather was gorgeous and there were orange tip butterflies everywhere

and a few peacock butterflies too.

there were also several of these bright little beetles in amongst the white dead nettle plants.

In Cammo and along the early part of the riverside walk, the path is through woodland and the blackcaps were singing their lovely rich song, chiffchaffs were calling their name loudly and other woodland birds were singing too. The later part of the riverside walk passes much more through scrubland. There were loads of whitethroats here, singing loudly and displaying too, with their short steep songflights. There didn't seem to be as many sand martins as we've seen here in previous years, though I've been pleased to read (via Twitter) that just up the coast from Edinburgh, Montrose Basin has 3 times as many sand martins this year as it had last year!

We sat and ate lunch by the river, just downstream of the railway bridge (see the photo below for Sunday Bridges), surrounded by singing whitethroats and yellowhammers and the occasional willow warbler. A kingfisher few past us as we ate our sandwiches!

Butterfly photos by Crafty Green Boyfriend, the rest are mine! Most of them contain shadows for Shadow Shot Sunday

For Nature Notes

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks to other webpages where you can find out more!