Redwings

Redwings

For weeks now their crouching run,
a moving field of Scandinavian beauty,
stained red and eye-browed.

Lately they flocked and wheeled,
small groups fusing,
now fifty strong,
calling and whistling.

Yesterday they flew away,
north wind on their wings,
frost on their beaks.

An emptiness on our fields.

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(The poem was published in my pamphlet Unthinkable Skies. I took the photo in the Meadows, Edinburgh on 13 February 2015. It's been a good winter for redwings)

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Meanwhile I've been restocking and updating the beach finds section of the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop. More to come in the near future too! 

Bird Therapy

 mute swan on Inverleith Pond

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Last autumn I lead some birdwatching walks for a mental health project. Everyone who came along was very enthusiastic about seeing birds and finding out more about them. Numbers of attendeed were on the low side, largely because the weather tended to be quite poor on the days of the walks (in fact one class was cancelled due to bad weather). The low numbers though meant I was able to spend more time with each person individually,which was great. Hopefully in the warmer weather of Spring, we might run the classes again.

The mental health charity Mind recently carried out research into the value of ecotherapy, which includes therapy throuigh gardening, spending time in nature and carrying out nature conservation tasks. You can read about their research and browse their ecotherapy resources here.

Birder Joe Harkness is specifically interested in finding out how birdwatching helps people's mental health and wellbeing. You can read about his project and take part in his survey here.

As ever, red text includes hyperlinks to other webpages where you can find out more. 

Sandside Bay

Sandside is an interesting little place on the north coast of Scotland. It has a pretty beach, which is obviously popular with surfers (there were around six people in the waves the day we visited). Yet it is near Dounreay, the nuclear power station, which you can see in the background of the photo above. (You can also make out a windfarm, obviously a cleaner, greener form of energy, but even wind turbines have their problems as I briefly discussed in the latter part of this post).The sign in the photo warns against picking anything from the beach, due to the likelihood of it being radioactive. But no warnings against surfing.....

The geology of this bay is beautiful

and there's a picturesque harbour at the end of a wee path

Not sure I'd want to eat the lobsters caught in these lobster pots, (even if I liked shellfish in the first place!)

We were fascinated to find several song thrush anvils on the path. Song thrushes are the only bird in the UK that can smash a snail from its shell and it usually does this on a favourite anvil stone. I have never before seen so many anvil stones in one place and we wondered whether it was one very busy song thrush or whether there was a whole colony of song thrushes each with its own anvil in it's favoured part of the path. We didn't see any song thrushes on our walk but here's the remains of a few snails around an anvil stone

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Obviously I wouldn't have picked sea glass or sea pottery from Sandside beach, but we saw almost no sea pottery or glass on any of the beaches on our trip. However, I've been updating the beach finds section of the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop and will be adding more in the near future.

Volunteering with the Water of Leith Trust

As many readers of this blog know I've been volunteering with the Water of Leith Trust for several years now. I regularly walk through the Colinton Dell section of the riverside pathway, picking litter and recording wildlife sightings.

Recently, I've also been sometimes adding the Slateford to Saughton Park stretch of the river to my walk, as the trust is currently without a regular volunteer to do this patch. This is a much more urban part of the river, with a couple of stubbornly bad blackspots of litter. It's a surprisingly good area for wildlife though. Yesterday, I saw two dippers and a grey wagtail and had my best ever sighting of a goldcrest, which hopped round the branches near me, just at eye level, for several minutes.

Plus the snowdrops are lovely at the minute and I found this patch of winter aconite, a beautiful garden escape which I've never seen before.

So if you are in Edinburgh and looking for an outdoor volunteering opportunity, you may be interested in offering to be a river patroller for the Slateford - Gorgie - Saughton Park section of the Water of Leith. The role involves walking the route about once a week, recording wildlife and picking litter (with no expectation that you pick every single piece of litter!). Training and a litter picker provided, plus regular opportunities to meet with other volunteers.

Find out more about volunteering with the Water of Leith Conservation Trust.

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

Forsinard

While we were up north we hoped to visit Forsinard Flows, a peatland nature reserve managed by the RSPB. However, the paths were closed due to icy conditions, flooding and fallen trees.

So we had to content ourselves with enjoying the scenery from the side of the road. We drove to a forest area, and had a wintry walk.

There's a lot of local opposition to the RSPB around Forsinard. Partly this is due to their plans to build a large visitor centre, which locals (and others) claim will be out of character with the setting. I haven't seen the plans, but it is clear that the current visitor centre in part of the railway station is almost certainly insufficient. Local opposition seems to be counterproductive to be honest, as surely the biggest source of income in this remote area is from birdwatchers who come to the RSPB reserve?

Apparently some locals are angry that the RSPB object to the planned windfarms in the area. However, the RSPB always make it clear that they only object to wind farms in the wrong places. Wind farms around Forsinard and Strathy would definitely be in the wrong place for several reasons:

a) they would damage fragile wildlife areas
b) they would destroy peat bogs which are valuable carbon sinks - that is they store carbon and once they are destroyed they release this carbon into the atmosphere making climate change worse.
c) these wind farms are so far from major centres of population that a fair amount of electricity (and I don't know how much, sorry) would be lost in the journey south.

Read more about the RSPB campaign against Strathy South windfarm.

There's a good article on Rain Geese and Selkies about windfarms and peat bogs in Shetland and another from Raptor Politics about how wind turbines threaten populations of rare birds. 

As ever, red text contains hylerlinks which take you to other pages where you can find out more.

Famous Flagstones of the North

One of the things I noticed on our recent trip to the north of Scotland, when we first arrived in the Strathy area, was that a lot of fields had upright flagstones around them, rather than dry stone walls or hedges.

The mystery was solved when we discovered Castlehill, an abandoned flagstone quarry and workers' village on the coast near Castletown.

The beach is full of old flagstones, left over from what used to be a major source of flagstones exported across the world.

 The village and quarry are now a very low key heritage site, with information boards that inform the visitor without dominating the site.

When we later in our trip visited Forsinard Flows nature reserve, we were interested to see that the pathways across the peat bog were constructed of Castlehill flagstones.

Show the Love - Save Midmar Paddock

#ShowtheLove is a Campaign to make Valentine's Day green and to share your love of nature and other things that are threatened by climate change. The campaign features a simple love poem, a video of celebrities reciting Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?'

People are being asked to share what they love on the website, in the form of Valentine's messages. People are also making and wearing green hearts to demonstrate their love of nature. World Wildlife Fund sent me this heart, which was made by Annette in Guildford, who loves 'the planet'.

I wore my heart to the official launch of the Save Midmar Paddock campaign hosted by the Friends of Blackford Hill and Hermitage of Braid. Midmar Paddock is an open green area that adjoins the Hermitage of Braid, that like many people, I had assumed was part of the nature reserve. However in fact it is privately owned and it's owners are wanting to sell the land for development.

It would be tragic though to lose this beautiful patch of land to development (the paddock is the field in the foreground, the hill in the background is Blackford Hill, part of a local nature reserve)

There was a demonstration last week (while we were up north) and today's was the official launch of the campaign, attended by local politicians, including Green Party MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament) Alison Johnstone.

 It was good to see so many people turn up, along with their dogs (it's a favourite dog walking area)

 You can keep up to date with the campaign on the Friends of Blackford Hill and Hermitage of Braid Facebook Page.

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 I also took the opportunity to do a bit of birdwatching along the way. Blackford Pond, just near the Midmar Paddock, is quiet well known for unusual birds turning up every so often. Today it was three teal, two drakes and a duck! Teal turn up at Musselburgh in large numbers at this time of year, but unusual to see them on Blackford Pond. I took some photos, but the colour is poor in them for some reason, this one almost turned out though.

Then a bus ride later and after doing some shopping I found myself in the Meadows, where I was delighted to see about twenty redwings hopping round in the crocuses, which are just starting to show. The Meadows used to be a guaranteed place to see redwings in the winter, but over the last few years I've hardly seen an, so it's been lovely to see them a couple of times this year. It seems to be a good year for redwings (which come over here from Scandanavia to spend the winter in our warmer climate) - I've seen good numbers of them in various places. 

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I still have more to say about our trip up north, so look out for those posts over the next few days! 

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