Corstorphine Hill

It was definitely Spring up Corstorphine Hill when we walked up yesterday! There was a light mist early on that lifted later, leaving glorious blue sky. The temperature was mild, though with a slight chill. The birds were all singing wonderfully, we heard blackbirds, robins, chaffinches, great tits and blue tits. It was wonderful to hear a song thrush in full voice, one of my favourite songbirds, it is declining in number hugely these days and is a much rarer sound than it used to be. We also heard a great spotted woodpecker drumming. A group of four jackdaws were testing out holes in a dead tree as potential nest sites and squabbling a lot as they did so. The gorse was in bloom, looking quite wonderful (see photo above). There were also celandines, daffodils, violets, primroses and a couple of speedwells. The trees were wonderful too, the ash with its grey twigs and firm black buds, the hazel with tiny leaves just starting to unfurl and the sycamores well on the way to being in full leaf.

We saw a couple of rabbits in the undergrowth and some kudu at the top of the hill (in the African Plains area of the zoo!).