The wildflower meadow in Spylaw Park alongside Edinburgh's Water of Leith looks beautiful at the moment.
When I walked there yesterday, there were a few Large White Butterflies and a variety of bees, though not as many as one might hope to see on a sunny July day.
Another place where the wildflower meadows are looking wonderful at the moment is Lauriston Farm, Edinburgh's Agro-ecology Co-operative - the topic of this week's post on my Substack blog.
Subtitled "Secrets from the Rainforest Roof" this classic from the mid 1980s celebrates the wildlife of tropical rainforests around the world. Mitchell (currently director of the Global Canopy Programme) was a pioneering arboreal naturalist, as such he was influential in developing methods for studying the rainforest canopy, by constructing walkways close to the tops of the trees.
This beautifully written and lavishly illustrated book looks at many aspects of rainforest ecology, from the relationships between pollinators and plants to the sex lives of Orang-utans to the mystery of the Calvaria tree in Mauritius, which were all ageing and unable to produce a new generation because their seeds had originally been eaten and then excreted by the Dodo, it was eventually found that the turkey had a similar enough digestive system and so the Calvaria was saved from extinction.
Mitchell clearly shows how understanding the relationships between different organisms can be of significant benefit, not only to securing the future of the rainforests, but also in enabling local agriculture to thrive: "In the past, tropical Brazil nut farmers wondered why their trees' multi-million dollar crop began to fail, until it was shown that the carpenter bees responsible for pollinating the Brazil nut trees had vanished along with the forest that used to surround the plantation."
It is notable, that even writing in 1986, Mitchell was well aware of the fragility of rainforest ecosystems, writing, for example, that in the USA: "Olive sided Flycatchers and Grey Vireos have dropped about four to eight percent every year since 1966. It seems almost certain that this is due in large part to the destruction of forests in South America, currently estimated at over four million hectares annually." He also expands on the need for arboreal naturalists to fulfil their quest to understand the 'most complex exhibition of life on earth'.
Yet tropical rainforests are still being destroyed across the world....
This is a beautiful and fascinating book that does somehow feel like entering a lost world.
The Enchanted Canopy by Andrew W Mitchell published 1986 by William Collins.
Earlier today, I met a friend for a walk round Arthur's Seat. Before we met, though, I had time to visit the Physic Garden near Holyrood Palace
The Wild Carrots were in full bloom,
with some of them just turning to seed
which are a mass of colour
The Early Bumblebees were enjoying the Scabious flowers
A common sight at this time of year is Rosebay Willow-herb.
I'm continuing to regularly survey butterflies in two sites in Edinburgh. Today, unusually for this year so far, the weather was almost perfect while I was surveying butterflies at Lauriston Farm. I recorded a total of 43 butterflies (which means there will have been a lot more around this hundred acre site.) Not so long ago, we never saw Small Skippers in Scotland, now they are common (they've moved north from England as the climate has been warming) and always nice to see, I saw eight today, including this one:
I also saw a couple of impressive black beetles
a Roe Deer and several birds including House Martins and a Buzzard.
I'm doing transect surveys as part of the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (I walk a particular route on a regular basis and record the butterflies I see). At the moment, though, there is a large scale butterfly survey that anyone in the UK can take part in - Big Butterfly Count.
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There are two forthcoming themed weeks to celebrate nature:
Love Parks Week (26 July - 4 August).
National Marine Week (27 July -11 August) which is longer than a week!
This is a fascinating look at the interactions between ocean currents, winds and living things. Unfortunately, the text is way more scientific than the title leads you to expect. I have a botany degree, which included a good amount of ecology and a module on environmental physics, yet I sometimes found myself having to read some paragraphs a few times to make sure I understood what was really being said. So, this book is definitely not aimed at the interested layperson, which is a shame, as it is a very interesting and important area of study and this book offers lots of valuable insights into how earth systems work and interact.
The book examines various ocean currents and systems such as the Gulf Stream, outlining the routes they take and how they are affected by weather, including temperature and wind. Specific examples are given of how ocean currents and weather between them affect ecosystems, focussing on phytoplankton, the tiny organisms that are the basis of so many food chains. The author also looks at how our changing climate affects 1) the distribution of various species of birds and butterflies - many species are moving northwards as the climate warms - 2) the timing of breeding - many species are now breeding earlier in the year and 3) the stability of ecosystems - where changes in population of one organism that may be directly affected by climate change then affects other species in the wider ecosystem.
Reference is made to a number of scientific studies, profiling some of the scientists who have made significant contributions to the field. The author examines evidence of historical and pre-historical climatic changes, putting things into the long term perspective, arguing overall that humans are definitely altering the climate by our actions but at the same time pointing out that it is more complicated than we may have been led to believe.
Admittedly, it is difficult to make such a complex topic easy to understand and there's nothing worse than dumbing down important science, but on the other hand a little more accessible explanation might have helped make this book more useful to a more general audience, or a more scientific title might have fitted better with the content.
The Dance of Air and Sea by Arnold H Taylor, published (2011) by Oxford University Press.
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I'm delighted to have a haiku included in the Birdsong issue of Haiku Girl Summer.
Yesterday we had a lovely walk through Edinburgh's Hermitage of Braid, starting at Blackford Pond.
The Purple Loosestrife around the pond is currently beautifully in bloom
Walking along from the pond up to Midmar Paddock, we found more Purple Loosestrife, along with Meadowsweet also in full bloom
We were happy to find a few butterflies in the paddock, including Meadow Browns
Small Skippers
and a Red Admiral
Walking from the Paddock down to the Braid Burn we saw this lovely moth, which I was able to identify as a Large Yellow Underwing (the poor thing looked a bit the worse for wear so we encouraged it to move away from the path and into the nearby vegetation)
As regular readers of this blog will know, I volunteer with the Water of Leith Conservation Trust, picking litter and recording wildlife along a stretch of the river most weeks.
At this part of its route, the river is brown not because of pollution but because of peat in the water, as it runs down from the peaty Pentland Hills, which isn't to say that Edinburgh's rivers don't have pollution problems (see this article in the Edinburgh Inquirer).
The Water of Leith Walkway is a lovely walk, well worth walking the whole 20 or so miles if you're ever in Edinburgh. But remember, start at the upstream end in the Pentlands, so that you're walking mostly downhill, to make the walk easier. The walkway mostly follows the river quite closely, though the river isn't always visible from the path.
This is the time of year when Red Soldier Beetles appear, and this year is no different, though they are fewer than in previous years. However, I did find this group
I'm doing a butterfly survey most weeks at the moment. Today I was on Corstorphine Hill, starting in the Walled Garden and walking through the meadow areas of the hill. The first thing that I saw was a Common Buzzard flying into the trees with a kill (it looked like a rat or a baby rabbit, I was too far away to see), then I heard the clamour of young in the nest as they were fed! Buzzards are common birds, but I've never seen them bringing a kill to the nest before. The photo below shows the trees where the nest is sited, but the buzzards can't be seen in the photo.
Common Spotted Orchids are in bloom at the moment, there are more this year on the hill than I've ever seen before.
The Common Line (Linden) trees are still in bloom, slightly fading now but still smelling wonderful
Some of the leaves were host to galls (probably caused by the gall mite Eriophytes tiliae)
I saw a reasonable number of butterflies, particularly Small Skippers
and Meadow Browns
and a couple of Ringlets
I also saw this parasitic wasp, with a very long ovipositor for injecting its eggs into whatever insect it parasitisizes - click on the photo to enlarge it and get a good look at the ovipositor
As long term readers of this blog will know, I regularly go out along Edinburgh's Water of Leith collecting litter and recording the wildlife I see as a volunteer for the Water of Leith Conservation Trust. Today I managed to get out and back before the rain started. The wildflower meadows along the river walkway are beautiful at this time of year. One of the meadows is more or less entirely natural, though managed to prevent invasive species from encroaching. At this time of year this meadow is full of flowers, mostly buttercups and Common Spotted Orchids
I'll zoom in so you get a better view of the orchids
The meadow is very marshy, so I don't walk in there to get closer to the flowers, also it's nice to feel there are areas where nature can just get on with its own thing without people barging in, even if it is with the benign intention of taking photos. There are Roe Deer in this area and some years the mother deer will leave their fawns in this meadow, while the mother goes to feed somewhere else.
The other meadow that is looking particularly lovely at the moment has been managed and sown with wildflower seeds in ground near to the old Bogs Mill.
This meadow contains a wide variety of species, including Cowslips and Meadowsweet. At this time of year, my favourite is the Meadow Cranesbill
This summer, I'm continuing to regularly survey butterflies at Lauriston Farm, the site of Edinburgh's Agro-ecology project and this year also at Corstorphine Hill.
Today I surveyed at Lauriston Farm, where the generally sunny weather ensured clear views all around, to the Firth of Forth, Cramond Island and the coast of Fife to the north
Lauriston Castle to the south (behind the trees in the castle grounds in the photo below)
and the Muirhouse housing scheme to the west (one of the tower blocks is visible behind the trees in the photo below)
I didn't see many butterflies, unfortunately, which seems to be normal for this year. I did see several Ringlets, which didn't stop for their photos, this photo is from a previous sighting.
If you're in the UK and love butterflies, please consider taking part in the Big Butterfly Count, which takes place from 12 July to 4 August. This UK-wide survey aims to help assess
the health of our environment simply by counting the number and type of
butterflies (and some day-flying moths) that we see.
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A week on Wednesday, I'll be posting a more in depth post about the butterfly survey on my new Crafty Green Poet Substack blog (this Wednesday's post will be about the environmental implications of the recent UK General Election).
We had a lovely walk round Saughton Park yesterday.
We were pleased to see these Two-Spot Ladybirds ensuring the next generation
It was also reassuring to see that they had good supplies of food, lots of black aphids!
If you're in the UK, you will know that today is polling day for the General Election.
Remember to vote, and remember that you need photo ID to vote. You can find out what type of photo ID is acceptable here.
The fact that this review is written in the style of the novel, more or less, the novel being almost 1000 pages long with no full stops except in the interludes, the fact that nonetheless, it is very readable, engrossing, even in parts, very funny, the fact that the narrator spends much of the novel in her kitchen making pies, cherry pies, apple pies, but never lemon meringue pies, while worrying about climate change, gun control, the mountain lion travelling around the area, her family, particularly her rebellious eco-activist daughter Stacy, but perhaps Stacy is less of a problem than the narrator thinks, perhaps she, Stacy, not the narrator, will in fact prove to be a heroine, heroin, illegal drugs, school shootings, the strange guy who delivers the chicken feed, who perhaps people should pay more attention to, perhaps they should be worried about him, more than about the mountain lion, lioness, the fact that the interludes in the novel, which unlike the rest of the book, do have full stops, are about the mountain lioness and her travels, looking for her cubs, the fact that nothing much happens in this novel, the fact that this, combined with the very length, almost 1000 pages, might put some people off reading this stream of conscious novel, the fact that many people dismiss this as a prank book, fake experimental literature, fake news, Trumpism, stream of consciousness, the fact that no-one really thinks in this style, the fact that maybe some people do think like this, the fact that at least give it a try and start off reading it, and maybe, perhaps, you might enjoy it
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman published (2019) by Galley Beggar Press.
