North Merchiston Cemetery

 We're taking things easy after having the COVID so, today we walked round North Merchiston Cemetery (which was part of our Daily Exercise walk back in lockdown). 

The cemetery has recently been mown, in quite an eccentric way, with the wide open grassy areas, where there are no gravestones, mown very short

while vegetation is still growing very high around the gravestones. I have to admit, I like the vegetation growing high, but this is a cemetery and lots of people object to tall vegetation around gravestones, while no-one would object to the open grassy areas being allowed to grow a little wild, specially if paths were mown through them. 

Last year I found a common spotted orchid in the cemetery for the first time, and I was very happy to find that this year it's still there, having escaped the mowing. In fact there are two, but I wasn't able to get them both in the same photo

The buttercups still look lovely where they've not been removed by the mowing

and this Meadow Brown butterfly was quite happy on the long vegetation 

and this Speckled Wood butterfly was basking in the sunshine 

(Remember, Big Butterfly Count takes place in the UK between 15 July and 7 August. Find out how to take part here.)

Several spiders had gathered together on this gravestone, they all had their egg sacs with them

In previous years, a pair of Great Spotted Woodpeckers have nested in this tree

but it looks like they've not nested this year, as the chick would at least be making a lot of noise by now, if not starting to show its face, as it did about this time last year 

Perhaps they've found a different tree! In the past couple of years, some people have been spending long periods gathered too close to the tree to watch the youngster, which may have been putting off the parents. (The above photo was taken with a zoom!).