A Day of Changeable Weather in Musselburgh

 Yesterday we had a lovely walk along the John Muir Walkway from Musselburgh in East Lothian, along to the old ash lagoons, which are now a nature reserve. 

The weather started off, beautifully sunny, like this:

 but later a haar (sea mist) came in and everything looked wonderfully atmospheric like this: 

In between, we enjoyed lots of birdwatching (which was obviously easier when the weather was sunny). The highlights included Long Tailed Ducks, one of which you can see distantly in the photo below 

 

Goldeneye, a male of which is below:

and Lapwings, once a common farmland bird, but now sadly very much decreased in number, so it was lovely to see quite a large group of them at the lagoons 

and Wigeon, of which a fairly large group were hiding in the mist, you might be able to see them in the photo below

It was amazing how different everything looked in the haar 

The Secret Life of Dust by Hannah Holmes

 

This book explores all aspects of all types of dust, from the cosmic dust that formed the origins of the universe, through desert dust, fungal spores and smoke from forest fires to pollution and household dust. The more I read, the more I became aware of the risks posed by all these types of dust. It's a sobering read. I'll just share some interesting facts here.

Astonishing amounts of dust are produced from dried out lakes, for example the Aral Sea, which has been massively reduced in size due to overextraction of water for irrigation, produces an estimated 150 million tons a year of dust, heavily laden with toxic pesticides. Up to "half the desert dust in the air today may rise from land damaged by human use." 

Natural dusts from different places have unique mineral signatures and combined with the differing sources of pollution in different areass mean that rain varies around the world in terms of the chemicals and particles contained in raindrops. 

The dusts produced from industrial processes have long been associated with illnesses, particularly asbestosis. I was surprised to read here how long humans have been using asbestos, two thousand years ago, Romans were including asbestos in funeral shrouds and even back then the risks were recognised by the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, who noticed that "the unfortunates who mined and wove asbestos were a sickly lot." Yet even now, asbestos creates problems. It can take us a long time to really address problems...

Asthma of course is another ongoing health problem strongly associated with dusts, some of them natural. The last chapter of the book looks at household dusts, and how these are affected by the appliances we use and our approach to household cleanliness.  

This book is very US-centric but is a fascinating read, wherever you live and may make you more aware of all the dust around you. 

The Secret Life of Dust by Hannah Holmes, published (2001) by Wiley.  

 

nightskies haiku

overcast skies -
the meteor shower
unseen

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I first posted this haiku a few years ago, but am reposting it, as last night, we had hoped to go to a meteor watching party but the skies clouded over and the party was cancelled....

Also a few years ago, Dosankodebbie made a beautiful artwork incorporating this haiku, you can see it here. 

Easter Craiglockart Hill

 

 Yesterday we enjoyed the autumn colours on Edinburgh's Easter Craiglockart Hill. The hill also offers lovely views across the golf course

There weren't as many fungi as we would hope to see at this time of year, but there was a reasonably good selection, including Candlesnuff

these Inkcaps (which I think are Glistening Inkcaps)  

and these very young Scarlet Elfcaps 

We then continued our walk to Craiglockart Pond  

and then home via the Union Canal, which inexplicably, we didn't take any photos of! 

 

Spineless by Juli Berwald

Subtitled "The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone", this is a fascinating look at jellyfish. 

Many people have negative images of jellyfish, as they are well known to cause problems, if their numbers get out of balance, for example, clogging up waterways so that boats can't get through, to causing power outages when they clog up cooling systems. They can also have a negative impact on the catch for many fishing operations, though some species of jellyfish are now becoming desirable catches themselves.  

However, jellyfish are central to many marine ecosystems, and can be entire ecosystems in themselves, offering surfaces for other creatures, such as shrimps to live on and shelter for small fish, who may struggle to find shelter. 

This book takes us on a tour through jellyfish, from ancient times (I was astonished to read that there are jellyfish in the fossil record!) to the current day. Here are details of jellyfish locomotion, bioluminescence and their roles in ecosystems. 

The book later broadens out to look at more general topics around ocean conservation and offers ideas of how individuals can help conserve marine life. 

Blending memoir and science, this is an excellent read for anyone interested in our oceans. 

Spineless by Juli Berwald, published (2018) by Penguin Random House. 

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I've just had a tiny poem published on the Smols website, you can read it here.  

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This week's post on my Crafty Green Poet Substack is all about the sharing economy, you can read it here.  

 

Linlithgow Loch

 Yesterday we had a lovely trip to Linlithgow in West Lothian, a short train away from Edinburgh. Of course, when we visit the town our main focus is to walk round the loch (though we also had a morning coffee in a nice cafe and later lunch in a pub). The weather was beautiful, a light mist lifting to sunshine later, but it was worryingly warm, it's certainly not supposed to be that warm in November in Scotland! 

The autumn colours were beautiful 

 

and we were delighted to see plenty of wildlife, including this very friendly Robin 

this Cormorant drying our its wings 

and this Great Crested Grebe in winter plumage

 We were also happy to find this lovely arrangement of lichens 

Linlithgow Palace (the birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots) sits by the shores of the loch and you get lots of great views as you walk around the lochside path  

 

Autumn Colours in the Meadows

 After tutoring my Friday morning creative writing class, I usually walk through the Meadows, and today the cherry trees were as beautiful as they are, more famously, in Spring. 

 

The Sycamores are surrounded by their beautiful fallen leaves too

 

The Importance of Not by Dorothy Baird

 

Dorothy Baird is an Edinburgh based writer, who comes along to one of the writing groups I facilitate. She has published two collections of poetry and this newly published pamphlet was a winner in the 2024 Poetry Space Pamphlet competition. 

It's a beautiful wee selection of poetry about things that are missing, fading memories, lost loved ones, the empty nest and the Sycamore Gap, the last of which is reflected in the cover design by Hanni Shinton. Nature is essential in this collection, from the "squirrel that could clearly run the country / with its problem solving" (You Can't Stand in the Same River Twice) to the "blackbird in his widower's weeds" (Therapy of Vowels), the "otter, the seals and the sleek wheel of a porpoise turning in the blue" (A Small Life Against the Timeline of Everything) and skylarks singing in many poems. 

I was taken right back to my own childhood by "Memories are Lonely things to carry alone" with it's description of a child's den under a rhododendron bush, my childhood den was under a sycamore tree, that has since been removed from the garden I grew up in, just as the poet's rhododendron bush is no longer there. 

 There are moving poems here about her father's dementia and his difficulties coping with the social distancing imposed by COVID-19 lockdowns 

"On the way out, she opens the door
with her sleeve covered hand and smiles
across the distance he wants to close
and she has to maintain, pushing back
against thousands of years of evolution
and the magnetism of family"

Social Distancing 

But in all the grief and sadness, there is always solace and the comfort of nature, and "snowdrops / spread among the stones like small bulbs of hope" in the cemetery (Carpe Diem). 

This is a closely observed, acutely felt and beautifully written pamphlet.   

The Importance of Not by Dorothy Baird published (2025) by Poetry Space. 

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My latest Substack post 'Art and Activism', went up yesterday, you can read it here. 

Autumn Colours over the weekend

 On Saturday we walked round Saughton Park and in between the showers I captured some of the lovely autumn colours on camera

 The cherry trees look particularly beautiful at this time of year, especially when viewed in full sunshine against a clear blue sky  

Yesterday, I met a friend to go to the Resistance exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland Modern 2 Gallery. Described as  "How protest shaped Britain and photography shaped protest", it covers all types of British protests including environmental protests from early protests against birds being killed so their feathers could be used in hats (a protest which lead to the formation of the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds)); the 1932 mass trespass on Kinder Scout, highlighting the lack of public access to open spaces; and the 1971 Friends of the Earth Bottle Dump which protested the withdrawal of returnable bottles by a major drinks brand (you can read an excellent article here, about the legacy of that campaign). So it's well worth catching if you're in Edinburgh (it runs until early January.)

While I was waiting for my friend, I took some photos of the autumn colours in Dean Cemetery, which can be seen over the wall from the grounds of the art gallery

 

Stinkhorn by Sion Parkinson

 I attended an event at this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival at which Sion Parkinson was speaking and I bought the book after the event. 

This beautifully illustrated book offers a fascinating and often eccentric look at the famously smelly group of fungi known as stinkhorns, a wider look at the relationships between smell and sound and the relationship between bad smells and epilepsy (which the author was diagnosed with a few years ago). The book takes in everything from natural history to the music of John Cage (who himself was fascinated by fungi).

The stinkhorn fungus itself is not only smelly but noisy. The reader's first reaction to that comment might be an impatient 'oh for goodness sake, fungi don't make noises' but "The audible hum in the space surrounding the stinkhorn does not, of course, resonate from the mushroom itself, but is the sound produced by a swarm of several species of fly that are almost always found about it. ... Houseflies hum not with their mouths but with the beating of their wings... in the key of F major. The noisier blowfly Collophora vicina one of the most frequent flies to visit the stinkhorn, flaps its wings at a more bassy .... pitch somewhere between D and D sharp".

This is one of the things I liked most about this book, the way it forces the reader to think about our senses differently. The occasional reaction of 'oh for goodness sake' quickly becomes 'wow, that's fascinating'. 

Stinkhorn by Sion Parkinson, published by Sternberg Press.  

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My latest Substack post 'Why Did I study Botany?' is now up! You can read it here.  

 

Customised Apron

This apron was in a bit of a state, the straps were worn and there were holes in it. So I decided to repair and upgrade it. I sewed brightly coloured patches over the holes, made new straps from the handles of a tote bag that I'd repurposed as a cushion cover and added a flowery pocket for good measure. 

 So now it looks better than ever and is even more practical, as I can store things in the pockets! 

Autumn Colours on Corstorphine Hill

 Yesterday we had a lovely walk, enjoying the autumnal colours of Edinburgh's Corstorphine Hill. 

I find autumnal colours tricky to capture effectively on camera, it really does depend on there being enough sunshine and for large parts of yesterday's walk thre was ample sunshine so some of the photos turned out quite well. 

At the top of Corstorphine HIll is the Corstorphine Tower, which was built by William MacFie of Clermiston as a memorial to Sir Walter Scott, in 1817, the hundredth anniversary of the author’s birth. The tower is open on Edinburgh's Doors Open Days and on Sunday afternoons during the summer, but for the rest of the year, you can only view the outside

Corstorphine Hill is well known for being a good place to find a variety of fungi, both edible and inedible. We found several Porcelain fungi on one tree and managed to get some photos, the best of which is below 

Other than the Porcelain fungi, we didn't see as many fungi as we might have hoped. We did however have a thoroughly enjoyable walk! 

Orison for a Curlew by Horatio Clare

 

The Slender-billed Curlew was officially declared extinct in 2024, with the IUCN listing updated on 10 October 2025. The next day I found this book in a charity book shop. 

In this book, Horatio Clare travels through Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania in search of the elusive Slender- billed Curlew, the last officially accepted sighting of which was in Hungary in 2001. 

The Slender-billed Curlew is "a species of curlew, plumaged in a blend of whites and golds, with dark spots on the flanks, slim and graceful of form, more refined than the plumpy common curlew, with a thinner, down-curving beak, which makes it look as though it is chewing a stem of grass". 

The author visits some of the places where this wader used to be seen and talks to people who have worked in conservation across the area, including Christian Mihai, a bird photographer, Petar Iankov of the Bulgrarian Society for the Protection of Birds (BSPB), Janos Berthond Kiss, who has been instrumental in developing environmental protection in the Danube Delta in Romania and Yannis Tsougrakis, a greek sustainability expert, who has the call of the Slender-billed Curlew as his ringtone on his mobile: "it rises and rises, a burbling ache, a fluting whistle with lament and wildness and defiance in it".

The Slender-billed Curlew favoured areas, such as the Danube Delta and the Evros Delta in Greece, which are severely hunted, though many are on paper protected, largely due to the rarity of the this species of curlew itself. Deltas are affected by rising sea levels and often also drained for agricultural expansion and polluted by industrial activities, which damages the ecology and fragments the remaining suitable habitat areas that aren't directly damaged. The degradation of these wetland areas is bad news for all species that live there, but particularly for rarities such as the Slender-billed Curlew. 

There are signs of hope, though no longer for the Slender-billed Curlew, now that it's been declared extinct. The BSPB has "persuaded the Bulgarian government to declare 30% of Bulgaria a Specially Protected Area under EU Law". An area of Burgas in Bulgaria, once home to the Slender-billed Curlew, before an oil refinery was built, has, since the refinery closed down, been restored and is now a nature reserve hosting 273 species of birds, though alas, not the Slender-billed Curlew. The author portrays the story of the Slender-billed Curlew as "a story of a great generation of conservationists. Their legacy, in protected areas, reserves, information centres, visitor numbers and the people they recruited and trained to continue their work, has a value which is incalculable".

However, though we need the optimism, we also need to pay attention to the loss of wetland habitats and the creatures that live there: 

"Perhaps this is a message from the Slender-billed Curlew,: the marshes, the soft overlaps of water and land, are shrinking. Human use leaves little room for environmental ambivalence.... If the coming hundred years see disputes over water usage in southern Russia, the Balkans, Europe or North Africa it may come to be said in hindsight, that the quiet, almost invisible fate of the Slender-billed Curlew was a sign of troubles to come".

Orison for a Curlew by Horatio Clare, illustrated by Beatrice Forshall, published (2017) by Little Toller Books.  

Autumn around Arthur's Seat

 We walked around Arthur's Seat yesterday and the autumn colours were beautiful. Here are some photos. 

 Dunsapie Loch was lovely too, and full of birds, despite being the water being very low. (We saw several Mallards, a few Mute Swans and five Little Grebes on the water, plus a male Pheasant and a Grey Wagtail both at the edge of the loch). 

 From Dunsapie Loch we walked down to Duddingston Loch, which was also looking beautiful

 

Here we saw Mallards, Mute Swans, Tufted Ducks and Moorhens. 

We also saw several of these fungi, which I thin are Shaggy Parasols. 

 

The Fly Trap by Fredrick Sjoberg

As many readers of this blog will know, I have a particular interest in hoverflies, many of which mimic bees or wasps. So I was particularly interested in this book when I saw it mentioned in this post in Whilst Out Walking, one of the Substacks I read. I buy many of my books second hand, but I doubted I would be able to find this one in a charity shop so I went to a local book shop and luckily there was a copy on the shelves. 

The author lives on an island in Sweden and devotes himself to collecting and identifying the hoverflies on that island. He amusingly describes collectors of hoverflies as: "quiet contemplative people [whose] behaviour in the field is relatively aristocratic".He himself first got specifically interested in hoverflies, when accidentally catching one that was an expert mimic of a large bee, which turned out to be very rare in Sweden. 

He discusses whether to use an insect trap or not, though doesn't address the ethics of whether collecting and killing insects is ethical in the current drastic decline in insect numbers. (He actually at a couple of points makes comments that seem oddly dismissive of wider issues of ecology). The discussion about traps leads into a focus on Rene Malaise, the Swedish inventor of the eponymous insect trap, his travels in Kamchatka and his interest in art collecting. 

This book is really a meandering exploration of being a collector, the hoverflies being just the starting point. Luckily (for those of us who already love hoverflies) there are interesting insights into these insects, such as the fact that the Narcissus Fly (Merodon equestris) can be identified by the distinctive sound of its buzzing, I'll definitely need to listen more carefully next time I find one of those! I was also fascinated by the fact that it is: "possible to map the movements of the most peripatetic hoverflies by examining the grains of pollen in their coats and determining where these originated".

Along the way, the book brings in observations on topics from the value of disturbed ground for hoverflies; forensic entomology ("more than 500 species (of insects) may be involved in the decomposition of a large cadaver"), a mention of hoverflies in the Bible and how to tell whether an entomologist loved their partner or whether it was a marriage of convenience ("Check and see if he named any hymenoptera after her. In that case it was true love").

The book also includes a challenge, one that as a poet and hoverfly fan I feel bound to attempt: "what poet writes verses in honour of the narcissus fly? Or of any hoverfly at all?"

Originally published in Swedish in around 2005, the book was translated into English by Thomas Teal and published in hardback in 2014 and in paperback in 2015.

The Fly Trap by Fredrick Sjoberg, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal published (2015) by Penguin. 

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If you're in the British Isles and want to learn to identify hoverflies, I'd recommend Hoverflies of Britain and Ireland, a Field Guide by Stuart Ball and Roger Morris.

 

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My Substack post this week focusses on migratory birds and insects. Some hoverflies migrate! You can read the article here.