Robin's Pincushions

 I was very pleased to find these Robin's Pincushion galls on a wild rose bush today. 

These strange looking growths are galls, caused by the larvae of Diplolepis rosae, a tiny gall wasp. Inside each gall there are lots of grubs, which feed on the gall over the the winter and emerge in spring as adults.

I've been making more postcards!

 A few posts back, I shared some of the postcards I've been making to share through Postcrossing. Here are some more, all made using craft supplies from second hand shops and paper scraps.  

I only send handmade cards to Postcrossing members who specifically say they're happy to receive handmade cards and have a stash of unused vintage postcards that I'm sending to other members. Wondering what to do with the stash of vintage cards is what prompted me to join Postcrossing in the first place! 

Saughton Park in Edinburgh

 

Yesterday we had a lovely walk round Edinburgh's Saughton Park which lies alongside the Water of Leith. The bridge over the river at the entrance to the park is often a good place to see Otters, though we didn't see any yesterday! However, the little island in the middle of the river was looking very vibrant with a variety of plants in bloom, including the pink Hairy Willowherb which you can see in the photo below. 

It was cloudy and very windy when we started our walk, but once the sun came out we were happy to see several white butterflies (probably a mix of Small Whites and Large Whites, we didn't get close enough to tell which they were). There were also a reasonable number of bees, including the Buff Tailed Bumblebee in the photo below 

posted as part of Nature Notes.  

Between the Echoes by Angus MacMillan

 

 A few weeks ago I attended the launch of Angus MacMillan's memoir 'Between the Echoes' which was held at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh. It was a very enjoyable event and I bought a copy of the book, and even spoke haltingly in Scottish Gaelic to the author who kindly signed my book, despite my lack of ability to speak the language (we did lapse into English very quickly). 

I've just now finished reading the book, which is a beautifully written evocation of growing up in Lewis, one of the Hebridean islands where Scottish Gaelic is still spoken and the Gaelic culture still hangs on, though much less so than it did even in the author's childhood. 

The book is divided into sections and looks in turn at memories associated primarily with water, earth, fire and air. The personal anecdotes are well chosen to highlight both the freedom that the author and his friends had in growing up in a rural island community and the strong sense of community where neighbours would regularly visit each other and doors were left unlocked. Also a sense of "feeling at home on the earth":

"being fastened to the world by it's colours and shapes, and the bodily feelings created by the natural world and its contours, in the form of grasses, rocks, mud, water, slopes and hollows. Inanimate things are imbued with life, or given an entirely different imagined existence: lumps of soft peat shaped into birds and planes, sticks transformed into swords; puddles become lagoons for sailing matchstick boats"

The book ends with a chapter entitled 'Of Place and Home' which outlines some of what has been lost.  Many of the Gaelic speaking islanders have left for education or work, and have been replaced by non-Gaelic speaking incomers, which has diluted the central role of the Gaelic language itself. (Tellingly, perhaps, the author himself no longer lives on Lewis.) Culture has changed too, a Gaelic 'ceilidh' used to be an informal gathering of neighbours, where there might be storytelling and music, but now, the ceilidh is a paid for, ticketed event centred on traditional Scottish dancing.

Between the Echoes by Angus MacMillan, published (2026) by Islands Book Trust.  

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My latest Substack is all about butterflies and birds along the John Muir Walkway, with more detail than in my recent post here. You can read the Substack here.  

Butterflies and Birds at Musselburgh

We had a lovely day at Musselburgh yesterday. It's always a great place to see birds and at this time of year, a great place to see butterflies. So we went along, hoping to get some good counts for the Big Butterfly Count, which started on Friday. The Big Butterfly Count asks you to spend 15 minutes in one place noting the butterflies and day flying moths you see (the project only focuses on a selected range of species). We spent 15 minutes in each of three different places and saw a total of 65 butterflies and three Six Spot Burnet Moths. Here are some photos:

We saw a lot of Meadow Browns, the photo below shows a female (unusually, in this species, the female is brighter than the male)

lots of Small Skippers (a species not included in the Big Butterfly list of species) 

a couple of Common Blues

and a few Small and Large Whites, which we didn't catch on camera. We got several photos of the Six Spot Burnet Moths 

We saw a good selection of birds, including around fifty Curlew, which was particularly pleasing as these birds are becoming very rare.

We also had a wonderful view of a Stoat, though we didn't get a photo of it, as it dashed away so quickly. 
 

Shared for Nature Notes.  

The Big Butterfly Count is Here!

 

The Big Butterfly Count has been running for many years now. The idea is to go outside and count butterflies for fifteen minutes! This year's Big Butterfly Count starts tomorrow (Friday 16 July) and runs until 9 August. Find out more and join in at the Big Butterfly Count website. The best times to see butterflies are between 10am and 4pm and you are most likely to see butterflies in warm, sunny weather. 

I survey butterflies throughout the summer at two sites (Lauriston Farm and Corstorphine Hill, both in Edinburgh), but am always happy to go to other places to count butterflies for the Big Butterfly Count. 

The photo shows a Comma Butterfly, one of the species I hope to see during the Big Butterfly Count.  

On Time and Water by Andri Snaer Magnason

A couple of weeks ago, I saw the film Time and Water (directed by Sara Dosa), which looks at the life and work of Icelandic writer and environmental activist Andri Snaer Magnason. The film uses family videos and archive photos to make his arguments about the climate crisis much more personal. His family have a close personal connection with ice, his grandparents Hulda and Arni spent their honeymoon on a glacier expedition! 

Having seen the film, I was very keen to read Magnason's book, which, by coincidence or not, was sitting on my bookshelves.  

The book is a much more wide ranging thing than the film. While the film physically remains in Iceland, the book includes Magnason's travels and his meetings with the Dalai Lama. The book also goes into more detail about environmental issues than does the film, while taking in a wider range of subjects including spirituality, that are only touched on in the film. The film is well worth seeing, and if you get the chance, do see it (it seems to have finished its current run in Edinburgh cinemas, but I'm sure it will come back at some point). Whether or not you've seen the film, the book is a must-read.  

The review became longer than my standard book reviews on this blog, so I decided to post it on my Substack, and you can read it here.  

On Time and Water, by Andri Snaer Magnason, translated by Lytton Smith, published (2020) by Serpent's Tail