Rhododendrons in full bloom

It's a beautiful sunny day today and I had read on twitter a couple of days ago that the rhododendrons were reaching their peak at Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Gardens. So we wandered down there today and indeed the rhododendrons were beautiful. Here's just a selection

We were also delighted to discover the far more subtle flowers of the Japanese Larch (Larix kaempferi)

(for comparison you can see my post following European larch flower development here)

It wasn't just the flowers we were interested in today of course. Plenty of birds were nesting

this mute swan was sleeping happily on the nest just by the boardwalk on Inverleith Pond in Inverleith Park across the road from the Botanic gardens.

This coot was building under close supervision from a mallard, also on Inverleith Pond.

This moorhen was nesting quite near the edge of the main pond in the Botanic Gardens. She was sitting on three chicks one of which climbed out of the nest while we watched to join its siblings which were being fed by the other parent (thanks Crafty Green Boyfriend for this last photo)

Edinburgh Botanics has a sister garden in Logan, near Stranraer. You can read about our recent visit to those gardens here. 

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