Butterflies and Sand Martins

Today was the sort of perfect Spring day for a walk along the River Almond towards the airport.

This walk passes through some lovely woodland

 and past some fields where often we've seen hares, though not today

there are some wonderful views of the river

and eventually the path opens right out

 sadly the fields on the other side of the photo above may not be there much longer as there are plans to cover them with houses, when the nearby abandoned military barracks are developed.

This walk is one of the best places in Edinburgh to see butterflies (thanks Crafty Green Boyfriend for these photos), we saw lots of orange tips

and lots of  peacocks, some which were in poor condition from having hibernated overwinter (this one seems to have lost half the overall surface area df its wings)

and some which were vibrantly beautiful

We had a picnic lunch sitting in our favourite spot right down by the river. We were surrounded by birdsong, including whitethroats, reed buntings and this yellowhammer, again thanks Crafty Green Boyfriend for the photo

You might see some black spots in the photo, these are flies! There were so many insects around it was quite annoying for us, though the sand martins were loving them! These lovely birds, related to swallows nest in the sandbanks here and eat lots of insects. We haven't seen so many of them here for several years and we really enjoyed watching them dash around. Here's their nest site

and here's one of the martins that Crafty Green Boyfriend caught on camera, mostly they fly too fast to be photographed.