A Few Days Away in and Around Dumfries

 We're just back from a wee trip away to Dumfries in the south west of Scotland. I'll share some of our photos over the next few days. 

We stayed in our favourite country house hotel alongside the River Nith. Almost as soon as we got there we went for a riverside walk

 

The other side of the path is lined with fields

We were delighted to see three or four Red Kites flying above the field. The photo below isn't great, but it is a Red Kite! 

Red Kites used to be incredibly common across the UK, but by the 1970s there were hardly any of them and mostly they were only found in mountainous areas of Wales. Since then they've been reintroduced in various parts of the UK, including in the Dumfries area, where now they're quite a common sight. 

As well as the Red Kites, we were delighted on that walk to see a flock of about 50 House Martins hunting for insects above the river. One evening we sat by the riverside and watched Pipistrelle Bats flying around, also hunting for insects. 

Moorhen family at Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Gardens

 We had a lovely walk yesterday at Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Gardens, always a great place to visit. The wildlife highlight yesterday was watching the Moorhens. Three generations were present. Adults, including the individual in the photo below 

 Juveniles (probably chicks from earlier this year, though possibly last year's chicks), who have duller colours, like the individual below (though some have entirely brown beaks)

and very young chicks like the one below  

Even at this age, the chicks can swim around quite happily, but they can't yet find food for themselves, so the adults and juveniles are busy with feeding duties. We really enjoyed watching this juvenile feeding the chicks

 

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

 I'd read so many reviews of this book, I'm astonished I'd never picked it up before now! As both a botanist and a poet, I was really drawn to this book and I enjoyed reading it. It braids together various themes of indigenous culture, science (specifically botany and ecology) and the author's own life experiences as a scientist, teacher and mother from an indigenous background. 

I really enjoyed the insights into north American ecologies, particularly Sweetgrass and Black Ash and how indigenous peoples carefully harvested these plants, using every bit of what they harvested, producing baskets and the left overs being used as tinder in fires. 

"The marvel of a basket is in its transformation, its journey from wholeness as a living plant to fragmented strands and back to wholeness as a basket" 

I was very struck by the inspiring case study of ecological restoration that was presented in the book. Onondagaga Lake is a site sacred to the indigenous people who live near it, but became very polluted and is now (at the time of writing) being restored. This case study showed both how Western disregard of nature can almost destroy an ecosystem but how on the other hand the land can be restored using science and indigenous knowledge. 

The book is important in its presentation of a world view that values the land and nature and for showing indigenous peoples living in harmony with the wider environment. We can all learn a lot from the wisdom in this book. 

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, published (2013) by Milkwood Editions.  

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This month is Catch the Bus month, you can read more about that in this week's post on my Crafty Green Poet Substack.  

Super Nature - a film review

Super Nature offers a patchwork of personal meditations on the natural world. Director Ed Sayer collaborated with forty people, all of whom who used antique Super 8 film cameras to record stories of the nature they see around them, with as little travel involved as possible. 

The collaborators include professional filmmakers, conservation rangers and local enthusiasts, which brings an interesting and varied level of skills, expertise and motivations into the end product. Some contributors share how being close to nature is beneficial for their health, others are involved in looking after nature including one of the rangers responsible for the 24/7 care of the last remaining Northern White Rhinos in the world. The film takes us to coral reefs, the Alps, the Pacific Garbage Patch and beaches in Cornwall. 

 

It's a beautifully made film, with a meditative flow to it as it moves from one scene to another (though there are several scenes which you want to last for longer). Shooting it all on Super 8 gives the film a nostalgic feel, that fits with the sense of loss that emerges from several of the scenes. Some contributions, particularly the director's own contributions, do veer towards preaching in parts, but overall it is a love letter to both nature and to Super 8 film. 

 

Super Nature is screening in selected cinemas., including at Edinburgh's Filmhouse (which is where I saw it today). 

Grey Squirrel

 I met this Grey Squirrel today, who was shouting loudly as they tend to do at this time of year. 

 

Figgate Park and Portobello Beach

Yesterday we had a lovely walk, as we almost always do on a Saturday. We started off in Figgate Park, where the pond was covered in waterweed and there were few ducks in sight.  

The crab apple trees were a delight though, full of red fruit that look good enough to eat, but crab apples are generally too sour to eat fresh and need to be made into jelly or wine.   

 

We were amazed by the number of Speckled Wood butterflies in the park, they seemed to be everywhere, 

The wildflower meadows (which have been planted rather than being native meadows) are still vivid  

and supporting a reasonable number of insects, including this Common Carder bee

and this Red Admiral butterfly 

 

Our favourite sighting though was this incredibly well camouflaged Treecreeper

We were also happy to sight a Sparrowhawk soaring above us 

Just as we left the park, a bus turned up that was heading to Portobello so we jumped on for the short ride, had lunch in Portobello and then walked along the promenade to enjoy a sunny afternoon at the seaside. (Portobello was actually much busier than it looks in the photo below!)

 Shared with Nature Notes. 

autumn haiku

autumn sunset—
the cherry tree
on fire

originally published in Sense and Sensibility September 2025  

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If you love seascapes of the west of Scotland, I can definitely recommend Frances MacDonald’s Sea Stories exhibition at the Scottish Gallery. Showing until the end of September.

 

Junk Journaling

Above is the front cover of a wee book I made at a Junk Journaling workshop at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. You can read more about it in the latest post on my Crafty Green Poet Substack. 

Contemplation of Roses by Annest Gwilym

Contemplation of Roses is the latest collection from Welsh poet Annest Gwilym. The opening poem Spring ends:  'birds are loud / in trees shouting begin begin begin' which is very apt as a description of early Spring birdsong and as an opening to a poetry collection. 

The first half of the collection moves through the seasons of the year, from Spring to the 'grey spaces of winter' in Hinterland. These are well observed poems, written with a great eye for detail, I particularly love the 'yellow cartoon feet' of the Little Egret in Season of Roses. All the poems are threaded with beautiful phrases to capture the individual feel of each season, including: 

 The syncopation of air-blue days (Sumer Is Icumen In)

sunwet smell of new roses (The Contemplation of Roses)

Soon the deer will come and shyly stamp out / the last blazing embers of summer. (Early Autumn)

Most poems in the second part focus on lonely people, including the remembered shared loneliness of the height of the COVID pandemic (Remembering Pestilence) and a lonely human sharing an encounter with a deer in The Quiet Night. Home briefly looks at the status of the Welsh language, weaving in images of the natural world:

'brittle on your tongue, slow as lichen, tactile as clay.
The language you dream in, yet cannot write.'

Dear London is an anti-love poem to the city the poet once lived in: 

your wrinkled river, as tired as the moon (Dear London)

Most poems here are free verse, though Dinorwig is a haibun, offering an interesting potted history into the site of a Celtic hill fort and later a quarry. 

The collection is brought to a close with Twilight.  

'On the shore of night,
my pebbled heart is made of air,'

This is an enjoyable collection, offering insights into the natural world, memory, place and loneliness. 

Contemplation of Roses by Annest Gwilym, published (2026) by Lapwing Publications. (Buy it here).  

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Disclaimer: I was sent a free e-book of this title in exchange for an honest review.  

You can read my reviews of earlier books by Annest, by following the links below:

Seasons in the Sun.  

What the Owl Taught Me.  

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Meanwhile, I'm delighted to have a poem in the latest, Music themed, issue of Allegro magazine.  

Fungi everywhere!

 On Saturday we had a lovely walk around Blackford Pond and the Hermitage of Braid. 

We saw a couple of Speckled Wood butterflies in the woodland, including this individual who's obviously had a hard life

 There were fungi everywhere, including Sulphur Tufts

Turkey Tail

Hairy Stereum

and Common Puffballs 

The fungus below I think is Sheathed Woodtuft (but I may be wrong, so if you recognise it as something different, please let me know!)

Today I found this beautiful Larch Bolete underneath a larch tree 

It's definitely the time of year for fungi, so keep an eye out when you're out and about! 

Shared with Nature Notes.  

Lone Wolf by Adam Weymouth

Subtitled Walking the Faultlines of Europe (in the UK edition, which is the one I read, though not the one illustrated here), this book follows the author's journey across Europe in the footsteps of a male wolf. In 2011, a young wolf named Slavc set out from Slovenia, travelled for four months through the Alps, eventually arriving in Italy, near Verona, where he met a female wolf, named, perhaps predictably for Shakespeare fans, Juliet. Now there are over a hundred wolves in the area. 

Weymouth writes about the historical human persecution of wolves and the current resurgence of the population (the wolf population has increased by 1,000 percent since 1965) bringing the animal back into landscapes where it has been absent for decades (though its range is barely more than half what it was in 1800). He talks to farmers and hunters, and visits the Wolf Science Centre in Vienna, listening to people's mixed feelings about wolves and looking at other environmental issues including climate change and forest fires. 

Having not lived around wolves for so long, people are understandably nervous about the reappearance of predators that can eat their livestock, and without government support, it can be expensive to protect flocks against predation. People are reluctant to let nature take over: 

"...this is what we speak of when we speak of rewilding. Certainly we should manage the risks as best we can, but rewilding means that the wild gets a hand back in the game, with an agency all of its own"

As one of the farmers interviewed in the book says: "If you make the choice to work in nature, you can't complain about nature. Nature gives us all this and we must give something in return". 

This is a very readable, thought provoking book about our relationship with nature and 'the wilderness' centred on one species and the journey of one individual across a changing continent.  

Lone Wolf by Adam Weymouth, published (2025) by Penguin.  

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You may also be interested in my review of The Last Wolf by Jim Crumley.  

Red Raspberry Slime Mould

It really does pay to look closely at things! I noticed these little blobs of a pretty orange colour today on some dead wood. I thought it was probably a slime mould and took a photo and it is indeed a slime mould. I think it's Red Raspberry Slime, but I'm willing to be corrected if there are any slime mould experts reading this. 

 Read more in this week's post on the Crafty Green Poet Substack.

Shared with Nature Notes. 

A Small Copper Butterfly on Corstorphine Hill

 Yesterday we had a lovely walk around Corstorphine Hill. One of the highlights was seeing this beautiful Small Copper butterfly, one of my favourites. These are really tiny butterflies with gorgeous colours and markings. They're not uncommon but they can be very elusive, partly because they're so small. This individual was very happy to be photographed, first posing on Ragwort, which is an important plant for many insects

then the butterfly moved to the thistles

We also saw a Speckled Wood 

Buzzards nest in this area, and two were flying above us (not that you can tell they're Buzzards in the photo below!) 

A Raven also flew over, but too quickly to be captured on camera! 

Shared with Nature Notes.  

A Walk at Cramond

 Earlier today we had a lovely walk along the Firth of Forth from Silverknowes to Cramond, passing Cramond island

 The walkway was very busy with lots of people walking, a few people cycling and a lot of dogs. The walk is quite quiet at this time of year in terms of birds, there are lots of gulls and crows but few waders, as they tend to gather here in autumn and winter. We were, however, very happy to see a large family group of Goldfinches, you can see them in the photo below, feeding on the thistle seeds, the adults have red faces, the youngsters lack red faces, and if you enlarge the photo and look very carefully you may be able to recognise the Goldfinch with a partially red face, that is almost (but not quite) an adult). 

For Nature Notes. 
 

Not all bees are social!

 When you think of bees, you probably think of honey bees and bumblebees, which are all social insects. However, not all bees are social, most bees in the UK in fact are solitary bees. Yesterday Crafty Green Boyfriend and I attended an excellent Introduction to Solitary Bees event, organised by TWIC (The Wildlife Information Centre). You can read more about it in this week's Substack post.

The photo below shows a female Hairy Footed Flower Bee, my favourite solitary bee! These bees can be seen in Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens in the Spring. 

 

Easter Craiglockart Hill and Craiglockart Pond

 Yesterday we had a lovely walk around Easter Craiglockart Hill and Craiglockart Pond. It's quite a steep hill so it's nice that there are a few benches at the top where you can sit and enjoy the views. 

It was lovely to see several patches of Harebells, such lovely, delicate flowers 

We then walked through the pleasant meadow / orchard area 
 

which is in the grounds of Craighouse, which has a long and interesting history, starting from Old Craig House which was built in the 16th Century, through the development of a clinic which later became part of Napier University and is now a housing development, though with plentiful green-space surrounding it. You can see most of the buildings in the photo below 

From there we walked to Craiglockart Pond  

which is next to a lovely wetland area, full of bulrushes and other plants

There are three superficially similar but different flowers growing here, Rosebay Willowherb

the closely related Hairy Willowherb (also known as Great Willowherb) 

and Purple Loosestrife 

Always a lovely area to walk round! 

 

 

Closing my Etsy shop

 It's many years now since I set up shop on Etsy. My first shop was called Crafty Green Poet and sold an eclectic mix of handmade items (mostly jewellery), vintage items and craft supplies. After a few years I decided to split the shop into two and about ten years ago set up Crafty Green Magpie as the shop for the vintage and supplies, Crafty Green Poet then solely selling handmade items. A few years after that, people stopped buying my handmade items - one of my biggest sellers had always been my handmade lanyards, which people totally stopped buying during the COVID lockdown when people stopped going into the office.... So I recombined the shops back into one and Crafty Green Magpie has since then been selling mostly vintage and supplies with the occasional handmade item. 

Anyway, I've decided it's now time to stop selling. My Crafty Green Magpie Etsy shop will close soon after Christmas. You can browse all the items here. 

The Nightingale by Sam Lee

 

In many ways this is a wonderful book. It shares the science about Nightingales and their decline in the UK, along with information about conservation successes (he mentions Isabella Tree's excellent book Wilding, which outlines the work she has done with her husband at the Knepp estate, you can read my review of that book here). Lee is also interested in our cultural connections with Nightingales and shares legends, songs, poems and folk tales from across the world. The book ends with a call to the reader to join in nature conservation activities, which, these days particularly, is a vital addition to any natural history book.

Author Sam Lee is a folk singer and has collected songs from communities such as Gypsies and Travellers. he makes the connection between the loss of these traditional songs as the singers die with the loss of the Nightingales' songs in the UK as the species becomes rarer and rarer. 

The book is copiously illustrated with beautiful paintings and line drawings of Nightingales. 

Two things spoiled it for me. I found the author's writing style to be often odd and ungainly (though I know many critics have praised his writing). I also felt there could have been better editing. One painting appears twice in the book and one literary extract that we are promised just never appears. 

Still, it is a book that will probably inspire almost any reader to want to find out more about these wonderful, nocturnal songsters or even to join one of the author's own Nightingale events, where he takes audiences and musicians into the woods to sing and improvise music with Nightingales. (Find out more about these events here).

The Nightingale by Sam Lee, published (2020) by Penguin.

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My latest post on my Crafty Green Poet Substack is all about wildfires and you can read it here.  

Arthur's Seat

We always love walking around Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh and it's sad and terrifying how often it's being hit by wildfires these days. The latest fire, which was on Salisbury Crags, adjacent to Arthur's Seat started on 19 July and took days to be put out. it's now out, but the site has been extensively damaged as you can see from the photo below, with the blackened areas on the Crags being a very sobering sight. 

 Luckily we've had a fair amount of rain since the fire was put out, but wildfires are becoming more and more common as climate chaos takes hold (wildfires are still raging in the Cairngorms in northern Scotland and across large areas of France and Spain, to mention just a few.)

We walked our usual route round to Dunsapie Loch, where there were a lot of Canada Geese, a couple of Mute Swans and a few Mallards. 

We were delighted to see this female pheasant with her two chicks 

watched this Kestrel for a while

There were some insects to watch too, including this Common Wasp busily eating a slug  

and several bees, including this Buff Tailed Bumblebee 

The thistles are already shedding their thistledown, which makes for some nice photo opportunities

Hopefully there won't be more wildfires, but rising temperatures and lack of rain make them more likely. If you're out and about in hot, dry weather, don't light fires or use barbecues and dispose of cigarettes carefully. Many wildfires are started by human carelessness and human induced climate change will often make them spread.

Posted for Nature Notes.