Wood Blewit Toadstool

 I was very happy to find this toadstool in Craiglockart Dell alongside the Water of Leith today. It's a Wood Blewit, quite easy to recognise with it's purple colour (though there are other purple fungi). 

 

 

Autumn Colour in Saughton Park

 We enjoyed the autumnal colours in Edinburgh's Saughton Park yesterday. Here are some of the highlights:

Comely Bank Cemetery

 The weather was so lovely this morning that I had a wander around Comely Bank cemetery. 

You can see photos of my previous visits to this cemetery here. 

Meanwhile, you may be interested in Inspiring Fungi, the latest post in my Substack blog.

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.