Foxes and their gloves

The foxgloves are stunning on Corstorphine Hill today

We didn't see any foxes, though we smelt one!

There were lots of bees (a few species of bumblebees as well as some honeybees) buzzing around the foxgloves plus lots of ringlet butterflies

We also saw this small emerald moth on the path, though sadly it was dead or very nearly so and we moved it to a safer place

Looks like badgers have been digging round the hill!

and at the foot of the hill, in front of the hotel - one of the regular rabbits

New Jewellery in the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop

Sometimes local second hand shops sell bags of jewellery that has sat on the shelves for a long time and not sold. Some of the jewellery is danaged, some isn't. I like to take apart the damaged jewellery and use as many of the bits to make new items.

These lovely painted blue beads came from a necklace that was mostly made of cloves! Originally I'd tried to incorporate them into a beaded lanyard but I didn't like the designs I was incorporating them into so instead I matched them with some smaller blue beads from my stash and made two pairs of earrings and a pendant. (The earring hooks are brand new and nickel-free.)

These are now available in the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop, one pair of earrings plus the pendant here and the other earrings here.

I also recently added a new beaded lanyard to the shop here.

Otters Return to the River

I have very rarely seen otters, though twice I've been lucky to see them in Edinburgh in the Water of Leith. For all their elusiveness they are a lot more common than they used to be, thanks largely to better pollution control.

Today at the National Library of Scotland, renowned photographer Laurie Campbell and his regular collaborator Anna Levin gave a talk on their recent book 'Otters Return to the River'. This was basically an hour long slide show of wonderful photography, not just close ups of otters eating or playing but beautiful landscapes, misty sunrises, dewdrops on spiders' webs, grey herons in the river, a dipper diving from its nest hole. A wonderful celebration of the beauty of Scotland and one of our iconic creatures.And a lovely way to spend an hour on a rainy afternoon.

Otters Return to the River by Laurie Campbell and Anna Levin, published by Birlinn,  won third place in the Scottish Nature Photography Book of the Year Awards 2014!

National Library of Scotland runs lots of interesting, free events, find out more here.

When the sun comes out

Stunning sunshine for much of this morning's walk round Musselburgh. At this time of year, it's not just a great walk for birdwatching, but also wonderful for flowers and insects. As I'm sure to have blogged already in the last couple of weeks, the flowers between the paths along the John Muir Walkway are the best I've ever seen them

and the clovers and tall melilot are wonderfully honey scented

Lots of bees here, though non wanted to be photographed. Unlike this beautiful burnet moth

lovely to watch as it circled round the clover, tilting to show the beautiful red of its underwings.

I was delighted to this week be able to photograph the speckled wood butterfly, which according to my book isn't supposed to be in this area yet, but fairly obviously is in this area (unless I've got my identification wrong, in which case please let me know!)

and the rocks by the side of the walkway were covered in hundreds of red mites - more than I've seen since my childhood (not a brilliant photo but you get the idea!)

And of course there were plenty of birds, including this male eider in eclipse (moult) plumage

and these mute swans floating off towards the weir, where I'd seen one swan just glide over gracefully a couple of minutes earlier.

A small beauty

I've seen these lovely looking insects before and never found out what they are. But thanks to the Edinburgh Natural History Society I now know it's a Grypocoris stysi. I saw these ones in Colinton Dell (by the Water of Leith) late this morning during a wonderful sunny period with five species of hoverflies and five species of bees also flying round not to mention a speckled wood butterfly, which was, like all the others I've seen so far, shy of being photographed.

Plus I saw a kingfisher for the 2nd time in 2 weeks, a dash of blue along the river.

Evening walk

We had a lovely evening walk yesterday along the Union Canal.

The ox eye daisies by the steps up to the canal are wonderful

while by the canal path, the edge of the verge has been mown to allow walkers to move aside to let cyclists pass and the rest is left wild, and is currently full of wildflowers including these tufted vetch (the purple flowers) and the meadow vetchling (the yellow flowers, though i may be wrong with this id, yellow vetches are particularly tricky to identify, i always find).

We met these young mallards, all sleeping in a pile,being watched over

We were less than happy to find that although Edinburgh Council sometimes gets it right with roadside, pathside and canalside verges (see the first two photos here and this post from yesterday) sometimes they get it horribly wrong, as with this pathside verge between the canal and a local park.

So we were quite sad as we walked home but then we saw this lovely sunset

The charity Plantlife is currently campaigning for local authorities in the Uk to manage roadside and other verges better for wildlife. You can find out more here.

Orchids by the roadside

Beautiful to see these common spotted orchids and other flowers in a roadside verge on Corstorphine Hill

This is just near the Corstorphine Hill Local Nature Reserve

where the meadow is looking lovely at the minute, though we didn't find any orchids in this area of grassland (though it is a big area and we only had an hour for lunch!)

We saw several butterflies, including what looked like a speckled wood (but as I mentioned in a previous post, these aren't supposed to be in Edinburgh!) a red admiral and several ringlets as well as white butterflies. None of them were even remotely interested in having their photos taken!

Lovely to see several bees too and by co-incidence, I have a poem about bees up on Verse Wrights today!