Trees in Spring

As many readers will know, I regularly patrol Edinburgh's Water of Leith river, picking litter and recording wildlife. I've become even more than usual fascinated by the development of fruits on trees. I don't mean the obvious fruits, like cherries or apples (though their development is also fascinating) but specifically beech and larch. 

At the beginning of May, I noticed these lovely little pom-poms on a beech tree

 

Today those pom-poms (on a different beech tree!) look like this:

Meanwhile, the larch cones on 25 March this year looked like this

and today they look like this (same tree, different cones)

(I'm preparing a post on my Crafty Green Poet Substack to show the development of larch cones, which hopefully will be posted in a couple of weeks, though it depends on how quickly the cones develop to full maturity!)
 

Sunshine, Birds and Insects at Musselburgh

 We had a lovely walk at Musselburgh yesterday. We started by walking along the River Esk 

 where we saw a good number of Eider ducks and their tiny ducklings (we counted 17 ducklings in total), though the water doesn't look to be the ideal state for birds to live in

 

We continued along the John Muir Walkway along the Firth of Forth and on to the Lagoons, where there were several Shelducks and not very many other birds (but this is to be expected, winter is the best time to see lots of birds here)

We also saw a few butterflies, including this Common Blue  

and a few Speckled Woods

 There were several damselflies, including this mating pair of Common Blue damselflies, being photo bombed by a second male

 and a Blue Tailed Damselfly 

 and finally a very bright Early Bumblebee

 

 

Arthur's Seat

 We had a lovely walk round Arthur's Seat yesterday, the weather was lovely, sunny and mild. 

We were particularly keen to check on the tadpoles in Dunsapie Loch. Regular readers may remember the scenes from a few weeks ago when we found a lot of toads in the loch. Well yesterday, we found a lot of tadpoles! 

Hopefully a good number of these will grow up to be toads (or in a few cases frogs). 

There were lots of Chaffinches singing around the hill 

and several pheasants who seemed to want to pose for the camera

We were delighted to watch this Roe Deer as she walked across the field - we wondered whether she had a fawn hidden away somewhere...

 

The Birds Foot Trefoil was beautifully in flower  

much to the delight of this Red Tailed Bumblebee (one of the few bees we saw yesterday)

 The Hawthorn trees were also in almost full bloom 

and were surrounded by St Marks Flies (though we didn't get any photos of those - they're big black flies with dangly legs which come out in late April, early May.)

 

 

Dalkeith Country Park

We try to visit Dalkeith Country Park at about this time every year, primarily to see the Bluebells, which make a spectacular display, alongside the Ramsons, which are generally in full bloom at the same time too. We had timed it perfectly! 

 

Some of our favourite paths around the park are currently shut off, so we needed to find a different route

The path opened out at one point and we passed some barns where a group of Swallows were nesting, it was lovely to see them all flying around. Even more wonderful, was to see two hares chasing each other around the fields! We've never had such good views of hares before! Here are a couple of photos of just one of the hares

Cherry Trees in The Meadows, Edinburgh

 At the moment I'm taking every opportunity I can get to wander through The Meadows in Edinburgh. The cherry trees are at their best. Here are some photos I took today. 

 

A conference and a garden in north Edinburgh

Yesterday was Earth Day (you can read my Substack post on the topic here). I attended an excellent half day gathering on biodiversity in Edinburgh, hosted by ECCAN (Edinburgh Communities Climate Action Network) held at the North Edinburgh Arts Centre, which is now housed in a newly built community hub building. There was a keynote speech from Simon Dures of Edinburgh Conservation Film Festival who shared an excellent film featuring entomologist and museum curator Ashleigh Whiffin outlining the rewilding project on the land around the National Museum of Scotland's collections centre in Granton.  It was great to meet like minded people and the lunch was excellent too. 

Part of the gathering included a workshop. I chose the workshop Reimagining Our Local Spaces for Nature & Community facilitated by Gill Hatcher of Scottish Wildlife Trust. The workshop started in the art centre's impressive garden, 

 

which has growing areas

 a play area and seating 

and a willow tunnel 

We then visited a small green area in the shopping centre that is still being developed to the front of the community hub building

Our task for the rest of the workshop was to think how this latter green space could be developed by the local community as an appealing, biodiverse space that would offer benefits to local people. We came up with a lot of ideas, which hopefully will be shared by the art centre, who are likely to really be working with the local community in the future to make this greenspace into an appealing, biodiverse mini-garden.

(I'll be expanding on my thoughts about the gathering in next week's post on my Crafty Green Poet Substack). 

After the conference I got a bus back into the centre of town and walked through the Meadows, to appreciate the cherry trees which are still in full bloom, though just starting to lose their petals. 

 

Spring in Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens

 We always love walking in Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens at this time of year. The gardens have a large variety of rhodendrons and azaleas that bloom in sequence over Spring. A different selection were in bloom when we visited the gardens in March than were out yesterday. Here are some of the blooms from yesterday

 

We also recorded all the birds we saw for the BTO Birds in Greenspaces Project, which you can get involved with here, if you're in the UK. We were particularly pleased to see this Nuthatch:

We were also delighted to see a good number of Hairy Footed Flower Bees in exactly the same area of the gardens as we had seen them last year. Last year we had only seen females here, but  this year we saw both the brownish males 

and the black females 

 (Thanks to Crafty Green Boyfriend for the photos of the Nuthatch and Bees)

Newington Cemetery

 A few years ago, I was employed to carry out wildlife surveys of all of the council managed cemeteries in Edinburgh, a job I really enjoyed. I still try to visit cemeteries whenever I pass. One of my favourites is Newington Cemetery and as I was in the vicinity yesterday, I took a wee wander there. One of the things I love about this cemetery is how it feels like a natural woodland but also it feels well managed, helped by the fact that not too many of the gravestones have been vandalised or pushed over for the sakes of health and safety as is the case in many of our older cemeteries. 

 

There are lots of beautiful trees in this cemetery, including this magnificent cherry

Lots of birds were singing and flying around and I made notes of them all for the BTO's Birds in Greenspaces project which you can join here, if you're in the UK. 

**

This week's Crafty Green Poet Substack post is out now, all about haiku and nature, you can read it here. 
 

Grey Heron

We had a lovely walk along the Water of Leith on Saturday and were very pleased to see two Grey Herons fishing, surprisingly close to each other. Though not so close we could get them both in the same photo! Here's one of them

 

Easter Monday in The Figgate Park

 The weather has been lovely today, certainly nice enough to enjoy an easter Monday walk round Edinburgh's Figgate Park. The willow trees are looking lovely 

 

and the Norway Maple's beautiful flowers are out at the moment, I was lucky to find these ones hanging at a suitable level to take easy photos

There were plenty of birds around, which I have recorded for the Birds in Greenspaces project, but only these Mallards were willing to pose for the camera - the male was being very protective of the female, keeping an eye out while she ate