Saturday 2 April 2016

Birds on Arthurs Seat and the Crags

We had a lovely walk round Arthur's Seat today.
 

We enjoyed watching the jackdaws, this couple were collecting nesting material

while this one seemed to have already found a nesting site

 several pairs nest in the holes in this wall by the side of the road every year, Crafty Green Boyfriend caught these two leaving their nest hole


The herons already have their nests built, you can see them in the trees on the island in Duddingston loch, another photo from Crafty Green Boyfriend whose camera has a better zoom than mine!

I took this photo, which shows the island in the overall context of the loch 
 
Crafty Green Boyfriend also took this photo of a greenfinch, we were surprised by how many of these lovely little birds we saw today, they are generally declining in number and not usually very common, but we guessed we saw about 5 or 6 today

Crafty Green Boyfriend also caught this lovely chaffinch on camera

We also saw a couple of pairs of fulmars nesting in the cliffs of Salisbury crags, one of their few inland nesting colonies. The colony here is sadly a lot smaller than it used to be and neither of us could get photos of the birds.

There were some beautiful lichens on some of the trees, I particularly like this one, which clearly shows the round fruiting bodies in the yellowe lichen (and I've given up trying to identify lichens for now!)


The whole area round Arthurs Seat and the Crags is very beautiful, here are some more of my photos





***
One of the prompts for NaPoWriMo today was to take a piece of jargonistic, official writing and transform it into something more poetic. So I'm thinking of doing this with the manifesto of one of the Scottish conservation organisations, but so far have not been enough inspired by the text to produce anything resembling poetry! I did write two poems yesterday though so I am on target!

9 comments:

eileeninmd said...

Hello, wonderful walk and bird sightings. I like teh chaffinch and greenfinch. The heron's nest are cool. Happy weekend to you!

Bill said...

To one who has been long in city pent, these are delightful.

Simon Douglas Thompson said...

think greenfinches are stabilising now, I didn't see any here for years, then saw a couple on the cycle track the other day. They certainly crashed due to disease though.

P. M. Doolan said...

I visited Edinburgh for the first time ever last week and had a view of Arthur's Seat from my hotel room. I knew Edinburgh was supposed to be beautiful, but hadn't quite realised how magnificent it really is. We had two wonderful days there, visiting the university mainly. Wish I had had the time to visit Arthur's Seat.

sage said...

It appears to be a nice walk!

RG said...

Great photo of the herons nesting. It is heron nesting here as well, and sometimes there are 100 and more birds fishing in the bay shallows near the rookery.

Lowcarb team member said...

Well sitting on my settee, and looking at your photo's here, I've had a lovely walk, thank you.
I love the ones of the greenfinch and chaffinch, such lovely colours.
The weekend has certainly been quite nice weather for walking.

Hope the coming new week is a good one for you.

All the best Jan

Lynn said...

Those scenes are very calming - I may come back here today and have another look. Love the birds and their hideaway.

Caroline Gill said...

What a lovely walk - and beautiful photos. We rarely see Greenfinches in our neck of the woods, which is sad as there were quite a few when we moved in some four plus years ago.