Acorns and a lovely surprise on Corstorphine HIll

As I often do on a Friday, I joined Crafty Green Boyfriend for a wander round Corstorphine Hill yesterday lunchtime.

The acorns are looking lovely on the oak trees just now

but the most wonderful thing was to see two spotted flycatchers! These birds are really declining in the UK and are very rarely seen in Edinburgh. We knew that they had been seen on Corstorphine Hill in the past, but didn't think they were still around. We don't know whether these birds had been on the hill all summer and we'd just missed them (but their behaviour is so distinctive that it seems unlikely that we would overlook them all summer) or whether they were just passing through on their migration to warmer climates. It was lovely to see them flying from their perches and back again, though like Thursday's bats they were too speedy and slightly too far away to get photos of them. There were lots of other birds around too, but the spotted flycatchers were definitely the stars of the show!

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