Reflections on the Water of Leith

As many readers of this blog know, I do voluntary work looking after a section of our local river, the Water of Leith. Every Monday morning, I walk the couple of miles from the Water of Leith Visitor Centre upstream to Colinton village. It's a lovely walk and I often see grey herons and dippers and plenty of woodland birds though I've not seen a kingfisher along this stretch of river since I started doing this voluntary work, though I know there are kingfishers here, someone recently saw three of them.... Anyway here are some reflections in Colinton where the river splits into two for a little while before it joins back together at a weir.

for Weekend Reflections

Blog Action Day - Climate Change

To start with, it's great to have some good news for the climate in the UK - plans for a coal fired power station at Kingsnorth have been shelved, as have the plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport. Of course these announcements don't guarantee that there won't be new power stations or new runways elsewhere in the country, but even so, this may be an indication that arguments are being listened to more carefully.

One of the things that I find most difficult in the mainstreaming acceptance of the reality of climate change is that we are often being asked to sacrifice biodiversity to 'green energy'. Chopping down the Amazon rainforest to plant crops for biofuels or building industrial sized windfarms on rare peat bogs is enough to break the heart of anyone who loves nature. These kinds of developments are also counterproductive anyway as peat bogs and rainforests are valuable carbon sinks in their own right and mitigate against climate change. (It's excellent to see that several major shoe manufacturers have pledged not to use leather from deforested areas of the Amazon rainforest and it would be great to see similar pledges from biofuel developers).

I'm not against windfarms, small community owned windfarms on brownfield sites that make communities self sufficient in power can make a genuinely environmentally friendly contribution and there are some in the UK, see:
http://www.communityenergyscotland.org.uk/about-us.asp. Biofuels too have a role, if they are made from waste materials (such as chip fat) rather than being made from crops that could otherwise have been used for food.

I think what the argument is often missing though is that the root of the problem lies with our overconsumption. Green technology is great, far better the hybrid car than the gas guzzler, but even better is to try to use public transport or even, more radically to ask whether the journey is even necessary in the first place.

for Blog Action Day

Of wrens and foxes

I know that some readers yesterday wanted to know what happened next when the fox saw the wrens on the bird feeder. Well, the wrens fluttered around in a most unconcerned manner. The fox saw me and watched me and then wandered off, apparently not interested in the birds at all!

five wrens
on the bird feeder -
a fox watches


along the Water of Leith, Edinburgh

Shadow by Alison Brackenbury

Since I first read some of Alison's animal poems over on her Myspace page, I've wanted to read more. So I was delighted to find out about Shadow, a pamphlet of Alison's animal poetry, published by happenstance - always nice to support a local small press too!

Shadow is a lovely book, full of beautiful poetry about birds, hedgehogs, horses, bees and cats. (Rabbit bloggers may be slightly disappointed to find there are no rabbits - though hares make a brief appearance in The Rescue Centre.). The poetry is finely observed and beautifully written:

Starling is numerous, holds in his throat
the many colours of his oily coat.

(from On the aerial)

This is poetry centred on the love of animals, injured hedgehogs rescued from the road, lost kittens and ageing horses. This is also poetry that is open to the sadness we find in the loss of so many animals from our landscapes. Lapwings is a wonderful poem about the decline in these birds, once so common in farmland in the UK, it would be such a loss if they were to disappear altogether:

And I forgot their massive arcs of wing.
When their raw cries swept over, my head spun

with all the billiance of their black and white
as though you cracked the dark and found the sun.

Any animal lover who also loves poetry will be delighted with this book.


Shadow by Alison Brackenbury published by Happenstance, priced £4.00.

Shadowy Spider

Crafty Green Boyfriend took this shot of a spider in my parent's garden last month. Click on it to enlarge it! If you don't like spiders, you may prefer the shadow shot I posted on Over 40 Shades here.

Mallards and reflections

Mallards and reflections in Inverleith Park, Edinburgh

Weekend Reflections