Wildlife in the Farm Fields

 As regular readers of this blog know, I've been carrying out butterfly surveys for the last couple of years. This year hasn't been a good year for butterflies, the weather has been consistently too wet and windy for them. Today, the weather was reasonably good, so I was able to carry out a survey in the rewildling fields at Lauriston Farm - the site of Edinburgh's Agro-ecology Project. 

There weren't very many butterflies about, but I was delighted to see four Peacocks:

I was also delighted to see over twenty Epistrophe grossulariae hoverflies, which seem to have been the most common hoverfly this year.

 

Insects, specifically gardening to help insects, are also the focus of this week's post on my Crafty Green Poet Substack. 

At one point today, I noticed a Kestrel, hovering over a field, then something caught my eye - a Roe Deer was jumping over a fence and then startled a Grey Heron which flew up and away! Later I saw the Kestrel fly down to a prey animal, though I didn't see whether it was a successful kill or not.

Weekend Nature Notes

Yesterday we visited Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Gardens.  We loved meeting this family of Moorhens. There were four very young chicks and one adolescent from this year's first brood. The first photo below shows the adult with three of the very young chicks 

and here the adult is at the back and the adolescent is in the front

It was lovely to see the adult and the adolescent both feeding the young chicks. 

We were happy to find a good number of hoverflies in some parts of the gardens, including this Batman Hoverfly (Myothropea florea) 

but the most unexpected find of the visit was this array of Birds Nest fungi! I've only once before seen this unusual fungus and never before in such abundance! 

On Friday, we had a lovely lunchtime walk around North Merchiston Cemetery (which now has a nicely updated website, which you can see here). This cemetery is officially full now (you can only be buried here now if you already have a family burial plot) and is left pretty much to its own devices for the benefit of nature (obviously there needs to be some management though, which can be a tricky thing to get right). On Friday, we were interested to find several young Hawthorn Shieldbugs on a Holly bush

 

 

mallard tanka

a female mallard

tucks blue

back into her wing—

dimensions stretch and curl 

in the fabric of space-time 

 

 

first published in the inaugural issue of Password

Searching for Butterflies on Corstorphine Hill

I did a butterfly survey today around Corstorphine Hill. It was windy, just at the edge of being too windy for a butterfly survey, but within appropriate limits (which is just as well, as the weather isn't looking great for the rest of the week). The hill has some wonderful views

The Rowan trees are covered in bright red berries just now, and look amazing

I didn't see very many butterflies, unfortunately, just a handful of Large Whites and Speckled Woods and one Holly Blue. I got great views of the pair of Buzzards that nest in a tree in this part of the hill. 

It started raining heavily, about fifteen minutes after I'd finished my survey! 

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This week's post on the Crafty Green Poet Substack is all about the benefits of wildlife recording. 

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I'm delighted to have a haiku included in the Birds selection on Haiku Girl Summer.

Walking around the Craiglockart Hills

 We had a lovely walk yesterday, starting off with walking around Wester Craiglockart Hill

and then walking alongside Easter Craiglockart Hill to Craiglockart Pond, where we watched the Mute Swan family. 

The marshy area near the pond is looking lovely at the moment, filled with the pink and purple flowers of Hairy Willowherb (most of the flowers in the photo below) and Rosebay Willowherb (the flowers in the lower left-hand corner of the photo below)

We were delighted to see this Holly Blue Butterfly, laying her eggs on an Ivy plant (Ivy is, alongside Holly, a very popular plat for this butterfly to lay on)

and we were impressed by this spider, an orb weaving spider of some sort, but we've failed to find out what species it is. If you can identify it, please let me know in the comments!

Hot Summer Haiku

heat haze -
nothing is quite
what it seems

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first published on the Sun Baked issue of Haiku Girl Summer 2023

Corstorphine Dovecot

The other day, on the way to visiting Crafty Green Boyfriend's mother, I stopped to take photos of the Corstorphine Dovecot. This was built in the 1500s and contains over 1,000 sandstone nestboxes for pigeons, kept to provide meat and eggs during the winter months. It is the only remaining part of Corstorphine Castle, which was demolished in the late eighteenth century. 

Although you can't go into the dovecot, there is a nicely maintained path allowing you to walk all the way round the structure. There's also a nice wrought iron dove on the gate to the path 

There are a few trees round the dovecot, but the most significant one is missing. The Corstorphine Sycamore, which is rich in local history, was destroyed in a storm in 1998. You can read more about the tree in my latest Substack post.

Late Summer along the Water of Leith

 I was carrying out my regular voluntary work in the Dells along the Water of Leith today. The summer colours are already fading, and it's already starting to feel as though Autumn is on its way, even though we've barely had a real Summer in Edinburgh this year. 

I saw a Kingfisher and two Grey Wagtails flying along the river and walked along the path, hoping to see them again. This view of the area where the birds were flying is much more beautiful in real life than it looks in the photo below, the light must have been wrong for the photo!

 I'll maybe try to get a better photo next time. But it was certainly lovely to see the Kingfisher in particular, they can be very elusive.

An African Love Story by Daphne Sheldrick

 

Subtitled Love, Life and Elephants, this is Sheldrick's 2012 memoir about her life in Kenya. She was born in the country when it was still a British colony and lived through the painful period culminating in independence and later managed Tsavo Nature Reserve with her husband David Sheldrick. When David died at 57, Daphne went on to found the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which continues to look after orphan animals, particularly elephants and rhinos. 

The best parts of the book are those where she talks about her relationships with the animals she has looked after, she shares touching, moving stories about orphan elephants rescued from perilous situations. She documents well the curse of poaching that has afflicted Kenya (and many other parts of Africa and beyond) on and off for many years. 

However, her views on Kenyan independence are so colonialist, they make for difficult reading. I find it saddening that she should see the Mau Mau rebellion as unjustifiable aggression against benign white settlers, when there were so many good reasons behind the rebellion (though in her circumstances, it was probably difficult to look beyond what must have been a real sense of personal danger being perpetrated on her by local black Kenyans, particularly as her grandparents were victims of a direct violent attack and their neighbours had been brutally murdered). 

So, in short, read the book for the heartwarming animal stories and if you're looking for insights into Kenyan history, you'll need to look elsewhere. 

Daphne Sheldrick died in 2018.

An African Love Story by Daphne Sheldrick, published (2012) by Viking. 

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Today is World Elephant Day. 

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I've been adding new items to the handmade section of my Crafty Green Magpie Etsy Shop.

My latest craft project

It's been a while, but here's my latest fabric owl! Made entirely from scrap fabric and spare buttons. I've enjoyed making a series of similar owls over the past year or so, but have slowed down as I've run out of people to gift them to! I'm not sure these owls are good enough to sell (in the handmade section of my Crafty Green Magpie Etsy shop). What do you think?

Summer Bird Haiku

heat haze -
swifts coming and going
from nowhere

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originally published on Haiku Girl Summer.  

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I saw four swifts today, they will all return to their wintering grounds in Africa soon.

 

Weekend Walk around Corstorphine Hill

Yesterday, we had a lovely walk round Edinburgh's Corstorphine Hill. It's a place we particularly enjoy walking round, especially as there are so many different routes to take. So, yesterday, we walked from the wooded area at the back of the hill

 over this lovely rocky area

to the front of the hill

The hillsides are vibrant with Ragwort and Rosebay Willow-herb

We saw good numbers of hoverflies, including this Batman Hoverfly (Myathropa florea)

and reasonably good numbers of Cinnabar moth caterpillars on the Ragwort

Ragwort is a great plant for many insects, pollinators love it and Cinnabar Moths absolutely rely on it, but it's considered to be a pest species by farmers. "Gold Beauties or Toxic Weeds?" is an excellent essay about ragwort on the Stories of Co-existence Substack blog.

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I'm delighted to have a haiku included in today's butterfly themed selection over at Haiku Girl Summer.