Speckled Wood butterflies seem to be everywhere in good numbers at the moment. They have two broods a year and the adults we're seeing at the moment are from their second brood. I saw this individual yesterday, who looks as though its had some hard times recently but still surviving well enough.
We had a lovely walk around Corstorphine Hill today. It's always a wonderful place for a walk and a particularly nice place on a hot day as there is so much woodland cover to offer shade when it gets too hot (which it is regularly doing these days).
and this Peacock
Yesterday I had the great good fortune to be able to attend Simon Armitage's event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The event was actually already sold out, but a friend who had a ticket was unable to attend and had passed her ticket on to me!
I had already bought the book in the festival bookshop before the event and had read it all while queueing to get into the Spiegeltent where Armitage (the UK's Poet Laureate) was to speak. It's a short book, full of accessible poetry and beautifully presented, with wonderful illustrations by Beth Munro.
The book focuses on the places where animals live and was inspired by the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. Poems range from haiku to Insect Hotel, which imagines Trip Advisor type reviews from a range of inhabitants:
"Stopped here overnight on the way to a decaying oak a couple of miles away and ended up hibernating for the whole winter. Would deffo recommend. Dreamland."
At the event, chaired by Nick Barley (former director of the Edinburgh International Boook Festival and now director of the National Poetry Centre in Leeds) Armitage read from Dwell and discussed his writing process and the state of nature conservation in the UK.
Some people have commented that the book seems 'slight', which on first glance it might do (though I prefer to think of it as small and perfectly formed). However, the poems in the book have a double life and will themselves dwell in the Lost Gardens of Heligan, in a series of installations around the site, so that people will be able to find poetry as they walk around.
It was an excellent event and the book would make a beautiful gift for any poetry lover or anyone interested in animal homes. And if you get the chance, visit the Lost Gardens of Heligan and see if you can find the poems in situ!
Dwell by Simon Armitage, published by Faber (2025)
We had a lovely visit to Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens yesterday. As this year's Big Butterfly Count finishes today, we decided to carry out a quick count of butterflies in one of the flower borders in the Botanics. We were delighted to see this beautiful Red Admiral
Artichoke galls, caused by the wasp Andricus foecundatrix
I carried out a butterfly survey at Lauriston Farm today. As regular readers might remember, this is the site of Edinburgh's Agro-ecology Project, which is rewilding parts of the fields and setting up community growing plots and planting orchard trees among other activities. The organisation is keen to know how wildlife is benefitting from the rewildling initiatives. The last couple of years haven't been great for butterflies, but this year I've seen more of many species, both on the farm and elsewhere. Though today I didn't see a lot of butterflies (the wind, though acceptable for a butterfly survey was possibly too strong for good numbers to turn up). I did see a Meadow Brown (though the photo below was taken a couple of years ago in Portobello Cemetery)
My Crafty Green Magpie Shop has been open on Etsy for nine years now. I also for a while had a separate Crafty Green Poet shop (for handmade items only) at which time the Crafty Green Magpie sold only vintage and craft supplies. More recently I amalgamated the two shops. Over the years I've sold a fair amount of things, though it's never been hugely busy. Now though, the listing fees barely make it worthwhile, given that sales are becoming rarer. (I haven't helped this by recently limiting my sales to the UK, due to various customs issues with various overseas markets, but then the UK was always my largest market).
So, at the moment I'm thinking of only keeping the shop open until the current listings have all run their natural course. I may change my mind but it's looking likely that this is the end. You can have a final look around here.
I first came across Lev Parikian via his excellent Six Things Substack, which includes his 100 Birds posts, which are clearly related to his book Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear?
As a youngster, Lev Parikian was an avid birdwatcher. He also told lies about his birdwatching success. One hundred and thirty species ticked off on his list? It was really more like sixty. When he turned fifty, he decided to go birdwatching again. He would aim to see two hundred British bird species in a year. And this time he wouldn't lie.
This book details the author's rediscovery of the joys and challenges of birdwatching. The narrative skillfully blends information with personal anecdote, plenty of humour and vivid descriptions such as this observation of a group of Canada Geese:
"A squadron of eight birds organising themselves into formation, calling to each other in fervid excitement, a frenzy of organised chaos coming together at the last second as the final goose slots into place. They churn the water and the air, sending their fellow waterfowl scuttling for cover.... I'm struck by the everyday beauty of the spectacle."
This sighting of a common bird is what really sets Lev off on his ambition to see 200 birds in Britain in one year. Two hundred seeming like a manageable target. So each chapter tells of a month's birdwatching, his visits to various bird reserves around Britain and his meetings with conservationists and bird experts. There's a list of birds seen that month at the end of each chapter so you can follow his progress as he goes along. He's not just ticking birds off a list though, he's learning about their behaviour, the evolution of flight and birdsong. As a conductor he's particularly interested in music, but admits to finding birdsong challenging (which I think is something most of us can relate to!).
His enthusiasm always shines through, he's always as delighted to see a common bird as a rarity and has little time for the type of birder who'll ignore a whole flock of lapwings in pursuit of a rarity. He also makes the point that a birder from the 1950s would wonder where all the birds have gone, lapwings nowadays are almost a rarity themselves.
One of my favourite parts of the book is where he visits Edinburgh and discovers the wonderful place for birds that is the Water of Leith (one of my favourite birding places).
"The Water of Leith is twenty-five miles long. The odds against there being a dipper on this short stretch must be ooh look, there's a dipper."
This is a very entertaining and informative book for anyone interested in birds, particularly anyone who grew up enjoying birdwatching and who has lost the habit. Reading this will definitely make you want to get back out into the field.
Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? by Lev Parikian, published by Unbound.
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On Saturday, we visited Dr Neil's Garden, a hidden gem on the edge of Duddingston Loch,
near Edinburgh's Arthur's Seat (which you can see in the background to the right of the photo below)
and this bee (I think it's a Common Carder) who had found a pleasant resting place in between the petals of this ornamental daisy
The above photo of Thomson's Tower was taken from Jock Tamson's Gairden, which is a community garden, with orchard trees, vegetable plots and wildflower areas.
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Also this weekend we enjoyed an exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland. Monkeys: our Primate family is beautifully curated and informative with several interactive activities for children and the young at heart. It would be improved if it could include a bit about the ethics of animal collection, with specific reference to how the taxidermy specimens in the exhibition were collected.
