Autumn on Corstorphine Hill

 We had a lovely walk round Corstorphine Hill yesterday. 

We were intrigued to find a couple of faces on some of the trees, this is just one of them

There were plenty of fungi to see in some parts of the hill, including these puffballs

and this waxcap

We watched this Common Buzzard flying around for a while, obviously checking out the area for prey!

We were intrigued by these little passageways in the grass, which may be the entrances to tunnels used by voles, as we know there are plenty of voles around the hill (though they're rarely actually seen).

Bird-watching for Beginners

She could be anyone, this beautiful stranger.
She’s staring across the street.

At first, you think it’s you she’s staring at
(perhaps you’re getting lucky?)
but then you realise, no
she’s staring at something behind you.

You look round but all you can see
are birds.

Birds?

Why is a beautiful woman staring at birds?

You shake your head and carry on
to your office where you sign
a warrant to log
another forest.

 

originally published in the Birds Zine from Coin Operated Press. 

Autumnal Walk

 Yesterday we had a lovely walk round Blackford Pond, past Blackford Hill and into the Hermitage of Braid. It was beautiful autumnal weather.

This Speckled Wood Butterfly was basking in the sunshine 

while on the pond, we saw a female teal (the small brown duck in the photo below, with a female mallard partly in the photo in the background for size comparison)

The teal has a lovely teal green flash of feathers in her wing, but wasn't showing it while we were taking her photo. We did see it later from the other side of the pond, when we were too far away to catch her on film! We were also interested to see a family of dabchicks! One of the parents and one of the chicks are in the photo below.

This whole area is a delight at this time of year.

Autumn Colour

 

The autumn colours are beautiful at the moment! 

More beautiful colour can be found at this exhibition of John Lavery's work, at the National Galleries of Scotland at the Mound in Edinburgh. Lavery captured light beautifully, I particularly loved his paintings of the sea. The exhibition continues until Sunday 27 October 2024, so there's not long left to see it.

The Hunt for the Golden Mole by Richard Girling

I thought this would be the author's travelogue on his journey to find the Somalian Golden Mole. Well it is, but he takes a lot of digressions on the way! 

The Somalian Golden Mole was first described in 1964, based on a few bones found in an owl pellet by Professor Alberto Simonetta. Since then, no trace of it has ever been found again. 

Richard Girling sets out to see the evidence of the mole's existence and to ponder why such an insignificant species should matter, and along the way looks at the history of our human relationship with wildlife. We are told how many animals have been driven to extinction, not helped by the fact of how often capturing wild animals for zoos would lead to animals dying in transit. He talks about the history of conservation organisations and their work in the field and the importance of the Red List of endangered animals, which can act as a driver to enhanced conservation measures for imperilled species. There are many species that have rarely been seen, and yet for many of them little effort is put into finding them and securing their existence. Trophy hunting is a huge risk to big game species and yet the rangers who are employed to protect the animals are at a great disadvantage compared to the hunters, many rangers are killed in their line of work. 

The author makes the point that: "[c]onservation cannot succeed without popular support, and people as well as animals need to see the benefit", later adding "the tourist is a vital link in the chain of virtue that keeps animals alive and strengthens local communities". He makes a good point, but omits to add that it needs to be the right kind of tourism. He looks in some detail at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy  where tourism brings in income for local education and other community projects. 

We're introduced to moles as a group of animal quite late in the book, and told that golden moles are not actually related to European moles, with interesting details about how scientists, particularly in the last, would base their ideas on relations between species on superficial resemblances, whereas nowadays, we can investigate the similarities in the DNA to clarify family trees. 

He talks about reintroducing species to areas where they've been lost and emphasises the importance of the right habitat still being available if such reintroductions are to be successful. 

Finally, after all these digressions (fascinating, but still, definitely digressions) the author gets to meet Professor Alberto Simonetta himself, and in fact is allowed to handle the bones of the only known Somalian Golden Mole. The professor makes the point that we need to conserve insignificant species "precisely because we don't understand their value.... we have no idea what we might be losing."

The Hunt for the Golden Mole by Richard Girling, published by Chatto and Windus (2014)

 

Making the First Christmas Cards for the Year

As long term readers of this blog will know, I make most of my own Christmas cards, though often I forget to post photos of them here. This year, I've chosen mostly simple designs, made, as ever, from upcycled materials - card stock and embellishments bought from second hand shops. Crafting like this, while not, strictly speaking, recycling, does use materials that otherwise might end up in landfill. So, I'm using these cards as an example of rescuing materials from landfill to fit in with the 'Rescue Me' theme of this year's Recycle Week. So, here are a selection of the cards I've made so far for this year's Christmas. 

This week's post on my Crafty Green Substack is also about Recycle Week, focussing on house clearances.

Rescue Me! Recycle Week 2024

For 21 years, Recycle Week has been celebrating recycling and encouraging people to recycle as much as they can. This year's theme is 'Rescue Me' which aims to rescue recyclable items from ending up in landfill. 

If you have any items that you don't want, think first, can you re-use it? Could you:

* sell it on line? 

* donate it to a charity that would directly use the item in its work? 

* give the item to someone you know?

* donate the item to a second hand shop?

If you can't use the item in any way, and it couldn't be sold in a charity shop, then find out how it can be recycled in your local area. (Different places recycle different things in different ways, contact your local council to find out what happens in your area).

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am committed to re-using materials in the crafts I make. I buy craft supplies from second hand shops, my particular favourite being bags of unsellable jewellery, which include broken items that can be taken apart, and the pieces used to make new items. 

I'm currently clearing out the house of a close friend who died recently. It's a sad task, but I'm trying to make sure as much of her belongings get re-used as possible. I'll be writing about that in tomorrow's post on the Crafty Green Poet Substack.