The other side of the hill....

Crafty Green Boyfriend works very near Corstorphine Hill and walks round the hill almost every lunchtime. I join him sometimes on Fridays and we always take the same route round the hill (see yesterday's blogpost). There are however a lot of other paths that are further from his workplace so today we set out to explore some of those. We started at the most beautiful bus stop in Edinburgh

If you look carefully, you can see the verge is full of common spotted orchids (as well as buttercups).

This is one of the areas where Edinburgh City Council has started to see the value of letting verges grow rather than mowing them too aggressively. This is a great benefit to wildlife and to people who enjoy wildlife!

Inside the Corstorphine Hill Nature Reserve, the council has mowed paths across the grass, leaving the buttercup meadows mostly to thrive

This looks lovely and offers a great benefit to the bees and other pollinators that feed on the buttercups, clovers and other flowers in the longer grass. There are also some more orchids in some parts of this area.

One of the things that is so wonderful about Corstorphine HIll is the variety of habitats on the hill, including this wonderful rock formation

There were lots of insects around, including this Syrphus hoverfly

and this wood wasp, which according to the Edinburgh Natural History Society Facebook group may be a Ichneumon xanthorius, but is certainly impressive whatever species it is!