Corstorphine Hill and Moth Night

Beautiful sunny weather today for a lunchtime walk round Corstorphine Hill.

The ragworts look wonderfully bright in the sunshine and I was quite pleased with how this photo turned out. I think the hoverfly is an Eristalis pertinax (going by the yellow legs), though it's not the best angle to show the other features (so you'll just need to take my word that the rest of it looked like an E pertinax!). There were lots of hoverflies round this one clump of ragwort, including the other species of Eristalis that looks identical to pertinax but has brown legs. Unfortunately only this photo really came out.

Also we spotted a few of these lovely looking shield bugs, which are final instar nymphs of the gorse shield bug. It's quite well camoflaged, can you spot it in there?

The thistles are really in seed now, the air is full of thistledown, as are the spiders' webs.

We didn't see any moths, but tonight (until 12 September) is Moth Night - an annual celebration of moths across the UK.

To celebrate this, I've just added these moth (or butterfly!) earrings to the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop.

The butterflies are upcycled from an item of 'broken jewellery' from a bargain bag from a 2nd hand shop. The earring hooks are brand new, bought from the local bead shop. I've made 4 pairs of these earrings, three of which are in the Etsy shop here, I'm wearing the other pair myself!

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