Weekend Reflections from Linlithgow Loch

male tufted ducks 

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Autumnal Reflections

It's a beautiful day today, very warm for the time of year which is pleasant though worrying from a climate change perspective. (It's been a very warm autumn so far this year). Musselburrgh Boating Pond looks wonderful.

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Meanwhile in the hides, all the birds and the roe deer were too far away to photograph with any meaningful results, but this little slug posed nicely for me! (Is it a young leopard slug?)

Reflecting on Birds

It was a beautiful day at Musselburgh today, wonderful light for birdwatching. There were lots of birds around too! I was delighted to see 18 grey partridges at the Lagoons, this is well more than I've ever seen before and from talking to other people it sounds like it's well more than most people have seen in recent years. I also saw ruff, snipe, teal, wigeon, dunlin, golden plover, lapwing, curlew and a rook that seemed to be harrassing the other birds. Apart from the partridges there weren't high numbers of any of the birds but a lovely selection. Over the sea wall I got a distant view of a surf scoter hanging out with a group of velvet scoter.

I didn't take photos of any of these birds as they were too far away, but this carrion crow was more obliging. It's eating a fish that seemed to be still alive!

These Canada Geese by the River Esk were hilarious to listen to, they were making a lovely soft honking noise but also they were making a lot of noise as they were pulling at the grass and eating it.

And this mute swan just demanded to be photographed on the Boating Pond, where there are currently a lot of little grebes and today also another species of grebe, I'm not sure which species it was though (the grebes aren't in the photo)

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Dalkeith Country Park - the ancient oaks

One of the things that Dalkeith Country Park is renowned for (as well as the bluebells, which you can see in Sunday's post) is its ancient oak wood. These trees are amazing, all gnarled and broken but still hanging on. The park management realised a few years ago that because of the livestock that lives in the oak wood very few seedlings were growing and the wood would one day die out. So they've planted seedlings in protected positions, putting fences round them to protect them from the cattle and rabbits. You can see two of these protected seedlings in the background of this photo which shows one of the (probably relatively young) mature oaks.

I like the contrast here between the ancient oak tree and the modern plane in the clouds!

There's something beautiful too about the empty acorn cup here:

and the patterns in the camopy here:

and finally, for Weekend Reflections:

May is Walk in the Woods month, find out more on the Tree Council website.

Weekend Reflections on Linlithgow Loch

Here are two photos of different reflections from last weekend's visit to Linlithgow Loch.

Thanks Crafty Green Boyfriend for this photo of a male tufted duck in full breeding plumage complete with a magnificent tuft on his head!

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meanwhile I've got another haiku on Daily Haiku 

and I'm delighted to have two poems in this Standing Stones anthology from An Lucht Lonrach. 

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Reflections under the trees

Mirror for sale at Meadows Festival, Edinburgh

There's also a nice reflection in the top photo in this post 

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Reflections in Redford Woods

If you've been reading this blog over the past week, you'll know that Crafty Green Boyfriend and I recently discovered Redford Woods a lovely area of woodland along Edinburgh's Braid Burn. Today I thought I'd share some more photos for Weekend Reflections.

wild garlic in abundance on the other shore of the burn!

probably more shadows than reflections in this photo, but a lovely piece of water!





the view across to the Pentland hills from fields near the woods

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Lochs and Lochans

A few photos of some of the lochans (small lochs) we visited during our recent holiday in and around Dumfries.

Loch Mackie, Auchencairn Moss

Plantain Loch, Dalbeattie Woods


Plantain Loch, Dalbeattie Woods

Plantain Loch, Dalbeattie Woods

Loch Arthur

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Summertime

Yesterday Edinburgh had the most amazing thunderstorm that lasted a total of two hours, the storm spent that time circling the city and throwing thunder, lightning, torrential rain and hailstones at us.

Today we foolishly thought the rain might hold off for the Canal Festival. We made our way over to the canal and enjoyed looking at the stalls and the animals that Gorgie City Farm had brought along for the petting zoo (though Driftwood, the rabbit who we have sponsored for the last few years, wasn't there).

We then wandered along the canal and enjoyed watching the swallows swooping low over the canal and lots of swifts flying around higher up. There was a family of swans, with the cygnets definitely at the ugly duckling stage of development, thgh the adults looked magnificent.

I managed to capture some nice abstract type reflections in the water.

It really felt like summer and we got quite far along the path. Until it started raining. Torrentially. So we turned back. But we took some photos of the rain too, just to prove how torrential it was.

so that's summer in Scotland!

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Ugly Ducklings?

How can anyone call them ugly! We saw this swan family on the Union Canal today. The cygnets were very curious and came right up to us.

We also saw a female mallard with eight ducklings that looked as though they had just hatched, they were full of curiousity about the world around them and were zipping around at top speed, too speedy to photograph, but oh they were fun to watch!

We saw lots of swallows too, flying around low over the water, chasing insects. They seem to be nesting in the new flats near the canal. Last time we were there we saw house martins, but they didn't seem to be around today. There were also huge numbers of house sparrows, making loads of noise in the hedges, they seemed to have plenty of young. This is great news as in the UK, the house sparrow is declining rapidly in number!

Edinburgh City Council is holding a consultation on the future of the Union Canal. You can read it and add your views here. You can read my recent post about the consultation here.

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as ever text in red contains hyperlinks which take you to other webpages where you can find out more!

Unthinkable Skies - the musical

On Wednesday, I picked up a sample copy of the CD of poetry from my chapbook Unthinkable Skies with music from Belvedere Mountain Express. It looks pretty good, doesn't it? The cover photo is the same as was used for the cover of the book and currently also features in the header of this blog, although it's a different detail of the photo in each case. It was taken in Caerlaverock in Dumfries and Galloway. You can see the original photo in this post. Howard of Belveder Mountain Express has done a great job in recording and mixing the CD (as well as composing and playing the music) and in designing and making the packaging (which includes the words to all the featured poems along with photos I've taken. The CD will be available from Monday 20 June from CD Baby, probably only as a download.

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Meanwhile you can still buy Unthinkable Skies, the chapbook here.

Plus, I've had a couple of poems published recently:

Photo Album on Generations of Poetry (you probably need to scroll down to read it)

Alpine on Four and Twenty

Craiglockart Hill and Pond

We went for a lovely walk today, up Easter Craiglockart Hill then down to Craiglockart Pond and then home along the Union Canal. There were lots of birds singing, we heard chiffchaffs, willow warblers and blackcaps, blackbirds and song thrushes. We also almost bumped into a pair of bullfinches that flew away from us muttering angrily! Plus there were loads of robins everywhere, including three who were all together on the path, normally three adult European robins together would be fighting but these three didn't seem as though they could decide what to do! On the Pond we got very close to a family of moorhens - this adult came right up to us in what seemed a friendly manner (look at the lovely pattern in it's side and tail and those funny little feet!)

There were three or more very young moorhens in the reeds, they hid very quickly when a crow called out. It was lovely to watch the parents feeding the young and leading them around the reedbed (though you can't see them in the photo below!)

There were a lot of mallards along the canal. They're very handsome birds, as I've said before, though the males are very aggressive to the females (you can see my video of their mating here, if you've not already seen it).
There were also a few patches of the cuckoo flower (or lady's smock), one of the prettiest flowers of this time of year.

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as ever, text in red contains hyperlinks that take you to other websites where you can find out more!

Figgate Reflections

We visited Figgate Park last weekend and I posted some of Crafty Green Boyfriend's photos here. In that post I promised to show you some of my photos this week and so here they are! If you look very carefully near the base of the grasses in the first shot, you may see some frogspawn! You can get a better view of some frogspawn we saw recently in this post.

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Ducks

Here are some of the ducks at Gorgie City Farm, photographed last weekend.

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Above the Weir

a flash of kingfisher across the river disappears in the bushes

for A River of Stones and Weekend Reflections

I took the photo just above one of the weirs along the Water of Leith. We saw the kingfisher further along the river in Stockbridge and it certainly wasn't going to stop for a photo! Always a wonderful bird to see!

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I took lots of photos of the historic buildings along the Water of Leith in Dean Village and I'll be posting those in the next few weeks on my Over Forty Shades blog. Currently over there is a photo of a building in Colinton Village, also along the Water of Leith.

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As ever, red text contains hyperlinks to other websites where you can find out more!

Blackleach Reflections

As I mentioned in this post, we visited Blackleach Country Park, Walkden, Manchester at the weekend. The light was wonderful and here are some more photos, all taken by Crafty Green Boyfriend.

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Cramond Brig to South Queensferry

We had a lovely walk today from Cramond Brig in Edinburgh to South Queensferry, along the River Almond and down to the Firth of Forth. The first photo (taken by Crafty Green Boyfriend, who also took the last photo) shows Cramond Island.

The weather was incredibly nice, warm and sunny, almost like summer, despite the fact that most of the trees are still bare. We saw our first butterflies of the year, two peacocks and one brown butterfly that flew past too quickly to identify. There were lots of birds to be seen, especially pheasants in the fields, eider ducks on the Firth and goldfinches in the trees and even more to be heard, including song thrushes, chaffinches and a great spotted woodpecker. It was lovely to see two lapwings in their wonderful dancing display, but sad there weren't more of them.

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Reflections on Water

I took the photo above at Edinburgh's Blackford Pond the weekend before last. You can read more about that trip here.

One of my photos from a previous Weekend Reflections post (the first photo in this post) features on the front cover of my poetry chapbook Unthinkable Skies, which will be published by Calder Wood Press on 22 March. You can see the front cover here.

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