Close up Photography for 30 Days Wild

I noticed this lovely snail on a wall as we walked along Corstorphine Road after we had walked round Corstorphine Hill this morning.

I'm very pleased with how the photo turned out, it shows the spiral pattern of the shell very nicely and I like the contrast between the shell and the rough wall.

I don't know what species of snail it is, but sometimes all you need to do is enjoy the beauty of nature without worrying about being able to give everything names. (Though identification is really important and recording wildlife is vital for conservation work).

Patterns in Nature for 30 Days Wild

There are so many different patterns in nature it's difficult to know where to begin in a blog post so I'm going to stick to just two different types of patterns. Firstly, these patterns found in holly leaves, which are due to the leaves being attacked by a virus

Secondly, the wonderfully varied patterns of hoverflies, which are mimics of other insects. Here are just a few hoverflies with distinctive patterns:

this is a marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus), one of the most common species in the UK

this is a pellucid fly (Volucella pellucens)

and this is a footballer hoverfly (Helophilus pendulus)

If you have children who are interested in insects, the Water of Leith Conservation Trust has just added an interesting activity to its website "Observational Drawings of Invertebrates" which you can find out about here.

Patterns in Nature for 30 Days Wild.

Yellow and Orange for 30 Days Wild

It's been raining all day today but I've taken plenty of photos on recent sunny days! I thought I'd look at colour today for 30 Days Wild.

There are a lot of yellow flowers and lichens around at the moment, including these lovely buttercups

and this Xanthoria parietina lichen

and these beautiful orange hawkweeds

Earlier in the year, the laburnums in the local cemeteries have been wonderfully yellow

and the dandelions, which have now turned to seed, were vibrant not so long ago and offered sustenance for pollinators such as this Syrphus hoverfly

and yellow poppies

and the daffodils were beautiful in the local park

What shades of yellow are you noticing in nature at the moment?

30 Days Wild.

Join a Friends Group for 30 Days Wild

If you live near a park or other greenspace you may have spent more time than usual walking round it as your Daily Exercise during lockdown. You may have started to appreciate this greenspace more and wonder how you can help look after it.

Friends groups are a very popular initiative in the UK to enable groups of people to look after their local greenspaces.

Edinburgh's Saughton Park recently received a significant amount of funding from the National Lottery to refurbish it and to convert the derelict buildings in the park into meeting rooms and a cafe, to restore the bandstand (which had been removed from the park many years ago and put in storage)

and to install a microhydro electric generator on the Water of Leith where it runs through the park. A group of local people started a Friends of Saughton Park group to look after the park and to hold events to encourage people to visit and anppreciate the park. This is a very active group, with subgroups that focus on different aspects of the park, including the biodiversity, the history and the orchard. If you live in the local area, it's a great group to get involved with.

The Water of Leith doesn't have a friends group as such but it does have the Water of Leith Conservation Trust, which was the first river conservation trust established in Scotland. The trust looks after the river in many ways and, in normal times, offers loads of interesting volunteering opportunities (before lockdown I was volunteering with the trust every week and hope to return to that once lockdown allows for that).

During lockdown, we've been limited to our very local area for Daily Exercise walks and we've discovered that the two local cemeteries are real havens for wildlife. Dalry Cemetery has set up a friends group since lockdown and this group will ensure that the cemetery is kept tidy and will also record the wealth of wildlife that lives there.

Now that lockdown has been slightly relaxed in Scotland, we have started taking longer weekend walks to Corstorphine HIll, which also has its own Friends Group!

Other friends groups for greenspaces in Edinburgh include:

Friends of Easter Craiglockart Hill.

Friends of the Hermitage of Braid.

Friends of Braidburn Valley Park.

Friends of the Braid Hills.

Friends of Figgate Park.

Friends of the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links.

Friends of the Pentlands.

Friends of Midmar Paddock.

Friends of Burdiehouse Burn.

Are you involved in a Friends group or similar that looks after a local greenspace? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments!

For 30 Days Wild.

Seeds for 30 Days Wild

30 Days Wild is a project organised by the Wildlife Trusts to encourage people to engage with the natural world during June. If you sign up, they will send you a daily suggested activity (particularly useful if you have children!) or you can make up your own challenges.

I always like to look around and see what's changing in the natural world. It's interesting to see the seeds developing on the trees at the moment. The elm fruits, containing their seeds, are ripe

and in places the ground is carpeted with them

Meanwhile the sycamore flowers are turning into fruits

and some are already maturing

and the conkers are forming on the horse chestnut tree

For more on the horse chestnut tree, you can catch up with my Tree Following posts here.

Basic Nest Architecture by Polly Atkin

 

This is a lovely thin book, that I have to admit, when I first picked it up from the free book library on a nearby street, I thought was going to be a guide to bird nest design! Instead it's a book of poetry with a strong sense of connection to the natural world and a concern with global climate chaos.

In Buzz Pollination, the poet meditates on a bee that comes close to her

The shadows slunk longer. I heard her mumble 
to the apples. I waited, longer for her, wanting
her powder puff touch, her yellow, her hunger. 

While Jack Daw is an evocative character study of the small corvid the jackdaw

Acrobat / soothsayer. Splintered midnight in flight. 

Birds commonly appear in these poems as do foxes, the moon and rabbits.

After a pause, sure you are watched,
you stretch out into a living leap. 

from Rabbit in Morning.


Not all poems connect with the natural world, there are also poems about family, the sense of belonging and the experience of migraine headaches. 

These are beautifully written poems that are well worth re-reading.


Basic Nest Architecture by Polly Atkin published (2017) by Seren

A book review for 30 Days Wild. 

Time to Leave the Nest

Though we are in many countries still advised to stay at home as much as possible, the same is not true for young birds.

Today on our #DailyExercise walk round the local cemeteries we saw an amazing number of fledgling birds, including robins, blackcaps and chiffchaffs. We also saw an adorable family of long tailed tits which allowed Crafty Green Boyfriend to take their photos with the zoom lens on his camera - the second photo below shows an adult with one of the chicks. .

In the other cemetery, the young great spotted woodpecker hasn't yet fledged, but surely must do any day soon

We also saw a grey squirrel collecting leafy twigs and taking them to what must be its drey (nest)

The squirrel collected about ten twigs in the short time we were watching. Apparently (according to this page on Wikipedia) dreys begin as a collection of small, gnawed-off branches bearing green leaves. The leaves adhere tightly throughout the winter. A finished drey is a hollow sphere, woven from branches on the outside and lined with finer materials, such as grass and moss.

for Nature Notes and My Corner of the World