Learning about Scale Insects for 30 Days Wild

This morning I was taking a group around Inch Park, looking at the nature and working on a list of wildlife in the park for use in future projects. While looking at some lichen, we noticed some scale insects. My camera inexplicably was minus its battery at the time, so I couldn't get a photo, but you can see a scale insect on the NatureSpot site here. 

We were all fascinated by these odd looking creatures. I've often seen them but have wondered exactly what they are. So I looked them up and this is what I learned from the NatureSpot site: 

"Pulvinaria regalis is most conspicuous in May and June when the scale-like adult females produce large, white, waxy ovisacs in which they lay about 2000 eggs. The adult females die after oviposistion but often remain attached to the trees with their ovisacs throughout the summer. The eggs hatch in June and July and the first instars, commonly known as 'crawlers', migrate to the undersides of leaves to begin to feed. The first instars are the main dispersal stage and can be carried long distances in air currents, by other animals or in plant trade. The immatures migrate back on to the branches in Autumn before leaf fall. They mature in the following May, mate and migrate to a suitable oviposition site."

 I then wrote a version of this in my nature journal for the day as part of International Nature Journaling Week.

 

The text reads: 

Showed the class some scale insects in Inch Park. Everyone was intrigued, so I promised to find out more about them for next week. I've often wondered about the fluffy white patches that sit under and below the brown insect body and it turns out these are the ovisacs which contain around 2000 eggs! The females die after ovipositing but often remain on the tree through the summer. 

Learn something new for 30 Days Wild. 

 

Morningside Cemetery

 I'm continuing my wildlife surveys of all the council managed cemeteries in Edinburgh. I'm now making summer surveys of selected cemeteries that are particularly good for wildlife. Today I revisited Morningside Cemetery, which was, when I arrived looking rather magnificent after #NoMowMay, a project which has encouraged people to not mow grass as a way of allowing nature to thrive. 

Of course, there is a balance to be struck between allowing nature to thrive and allowing people to view the graves, particularly in cemeteries with recent burials. In fact the council mowing team arrived at the cemetery before I left, but the mowing regime is more relaxed than it used to be. Part of the purpose of my wildlife surveys is to find a way to manage the cemeteries that encourages wildlife while also respecting the people who are buried there. Which can be a very tricky balance, some people are adamant that anything other than a sterile lawn disrespects the dead. 

Morningside Cemetery is a good place for wildlife. The grass here is rich with flowers, many of which will grow back quite quickly after mowing. The Selfheal is starting to look beautiful just now (and is likely growing so low that it will escape the mower, which is set at a higher cut than it used to be)

and lesser stitchwort is well worth a close look 

and there are some pretty carpets of Germander Speedwell

I'm going to submit my records of all the meadow plants I found in the cemetery to Big Meadow Search, which runs until the end of August.  The Big Meadow Search is a UK wide project raising awareness and interest in grasslands and encouraging people to record plant species. You can get involved by undertaking plant searches on grassland near you. 

Meanwhile the horse chestnut flowers are already starting to turn into conkers!  

There weren't a lot of pollinating insects around, as it was relatively cool and cloudy while I was doing my survey. However this Banded Hoverfly (Syrphus sp) showed up

I also found a patch of flowers that was later buzzing with a number of bumblebees (mostly Buff Tailed Bumblebees and Common Carders) which I watched for a while, though no photos as they were all moving so fast! 

Around 50 starlings were in the cemetery! They flew around between the trees and shrubs and spent time looking for food in the grass. I enjoyed watching this parent and young fledgling, which inspired today's entry for the International Nature Journaling Week. 

Wildlife Surveying for 30 Days Wild.

The Return of Edinburgh's Community Festivals!

 The COVID-19 pandemic has meant that Edinburgh's community festivals had been put on hold. This year, although COVID is still with us (no matter what certain people might try to tell you), the community festivals returned. And yesterday's weather was suitably glorious.

Crafty Green Boyfriend and I started yesterday at Corstorphine Fair 

and we continued to the Meadows Festival 

Both festivals include a good range of stalls, including second hand books and clothes and a range of food and drinks. The Meadows Festival is much larger and also includes three music stages. 

The Meadows is a large greenspace and includes the Greening Our Street community garden at the edge of the area used for the festival. 

and finally, here is today's nature journal entry for International Nature Journaling Week, celebrating the beauty of the everyday and featuring a sketch of the very common and often overlooked daisy. 

For 30 Days Wild.

Blackbird singing for International Nature Journaling Week

 For International Nature Journaling Week, I created a wee collage featuring yesterday's haiku. 

The haiku reads:

blackbirdsong -

the sun emerges 

from the clouds.

**

The sheet music has been rescued from a music book that was in very poor condition, the blackbird has been drawn on scrap paper and the nature journal itself is an old notebook that a friend gave me. 

I realised that I haven't posted here the very first page of my nature journal, so here it is: 

International Nature Journaling Week only lasts for a week (of course!) but as I'm currently teaching a class on nature journaling for the whole month, I'm aiming to keep this journal every day of June. Though I may blog the results less frequently.

30 Days Wild - Visit a new Place

 As part of the Nature Journaling Class that I'm currently facilitating, we visited a small park near Arthur's Seat, Bauks View.  Despite living in Edinburgh for many years, I had never visited this park before, in fact I didn't even know it existed! It's looking beautiful at the moment with the cow parsley and buttercups fully in bloom

It also has lovely views across to Salisbury Crags 

 And as part of International Nature Journaling Week, here's my nature journal entry for the day, showing a red-tailed bumblebee. Written around the bee, are the words 'red-tailed bumblebee flies around the overgrown garden and disappears...' and below the bee are the words 'A sunny day at Bauks View near Salisbury Crags.'

Visiting a new greenspace for 30 Days Wild.

Drawing a Cactus for International Nature Journaling Day

 I've signed up for International Nature Journaling Day! As a warm up exercise, their website suggested drawing a cactus, so here is my attempt at sketching our cactus. 

It's very faint, but hopefully you can make it out! 

Here is our cactus in real life from more or less the same angle

The prickles were the hardest part of the plant to sketch (in fact, I didn't even try, though oddly enough, Crafty Green Boyfriend's first comment was how impressed he was with how I'd managed to capture the prickles in part of my sketch). 

International Nature Journaling Week starts tomorrow and you can find out more here. 

If you're in the UK, 30 Days Wild also starts tomorrow and you can find out more about that here.

Cheap Tricks 2 - the Journal

The GPP Street Team Crusade this month is Cheap Tricks. I posted earlier in the month about my supplies of reusable materials that I collect to use in arts and crafts. I've now made a small art journal entirely from reused materials on the theme of Cheap Tricks, Green Tricks. It's made from a promotional CD and cover, with the collages made from office waste paper and cuttings from magazines and publicity fliers. It would be nice to think that the CD was a DVD of the wisdom of Crafty Green Poet but actually, underneath the collage, its still a computer company publicity CD!

Journalling the Everyday! GPP Street Team

This month's Challenge on GPP Street Team is to make journal pages for the 'Everyday'. I'm made a small journal from a junk mail brochure - what can get more everyday than that! The front is covered with re-used wrapping paper and inside there are pages for various aspects of my 'everyday life', using photos and lettering from magazines, publicity materials along with my own drawings.

The topics here are technology (using mostly the page from the original publicity brochure and reflecting our recent frustrations with broadband technology!), our pet rabbit, green lifestyle (listing some of the ways we can green our lifestyle, plus a photo of a local bus), nature (with a drawing of the pied wagtail, one of my favourite urban birds and one I've seen increasingly frequently over the past few weeks),
poetry (with one of my own poems and an illustration) and Edinburgh, the city we live in. Over on my Alter Ego blog are the photos for the journal pages on love, cinema, languages and clubbing. Missing pages (ie I've not done them) are on work, clothes and reading).