Corstorphine Hill

 Yesterday was a lovely warm sunny day once the haar (sea mist) lifted. We walked round Corstophine Hill, always a favourite place. 

 

There was, as ever, plenty of flowers, insect life and birds. The speedwell (I'm not sure which species of speedwell...) is in full bloom at the moment 

as is the Cow Parsley 

while many dandelions have finished blooming and are already seeding

We saw a number of butterflies, including Orange Tips, the photos below are of female Orange Tips, only the males have the distinctive orange markings on their wings. The females can be identified by the markings on the underside of their lower wings

but less easy to tell apart from other white butterflies from their upper sides

Speckled Wood butterflies were flying around the wooded area of the hill 

We found this Agriotes sp click beetle

while on the dry path on the exposed part of the hill, we watched three species of solitary bees, two of which appeared to be nest parasites, this one, a type of blood bee, so called for its red markings

and this yellow and black striped bee, a species of Nomad cuckoo bee 

The nomad bees were flying around, looking for nests of other solitary bees that they could lay their eggs in, the other bees will then bring up the young of the nomad bees as though they were their own.

We saw a number of hoverflies, including this Batman Hoverfly (Myathropa florea)

Edinburgh Zoo takes up part of Corstorphine Hill and you can often see the Grevy's zebras at the top of the hill, which overlooks the African plains section of the zoo
 

Near the zoo, we saw this Willow Warbler, it was singing beautifully, which is how we could definitely identify it as a Willow Warbler, rather than the very similar looking Chiffchaff!