haiku

clouds gather
carrion crows fight
in the tree tops

A Basic Goodness

Every week I spend a morning recording wildlife and picking litter around Colinton Dell along the Water of Leith. It's always sad to see how many people throw rubbish in the Dells, though there's less of a litter problem here than along other stretches of the river.

Every so often though I find things that make me smile. Today I found an envelope in one of the Ladies Grottos*, when I opened it up I found this

The letter is a quote from Pablo Casals, cellist and conductor:

''Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. 
If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. 
It is not complicated but it takes courage.
It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.' 

* The Ladies Grottos were built in the 18th Century as part of the Redhall estate which then owned this area. Each grotto was designed as place for women to sit while the men went hunting.

Water Rail and Lively Squirrels

It's been a dull and damp day today but that didn't stop us going out! We started in Inverleith Park where we hoped to see the water rail and luckily it did finally appear, though it was limping. We hope it wasn't badly injured. Thanks Crafty Green Boyfriend for this photo

We then crossed the road and into the Botanic Gardens. There were plenty of birds to see including this male mallard

But the stars of the show were the grey squirrels - this one looks a little the worse for wear somehow

but the rest all seem in top condition, with glossy coats, fluffy tails and lots of energy

First honey bee of the year!

I joined Crafty Green Boyfriend on his lunchtime walk round Corstorphine Hill today. It was chilly but very sunny today. There's always so much to see up there! We were delighted to see the first honey bees of the year feasting on the gorse, which is in flower most of the year so offers a lovely snack for the early bee

This route round the hill gives you great views of the kudu in the zoo

The kudu share their enclosure with the zebras and we enjoyed watching one of the zebras as it watched a beautiful wild red fox as it rushed round the enclosure at top speed! It was glowing in the sun and was a delight to watch (though moving far too quickly to capture on camera!).

As is often the case, the bunnies were happily grazing the grass outside the hotel on the main Corstorphine Road

Censorship and the Environment

President Trump has banned federal employees from agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Parks from using social media to spread their messages. In response many of these agencies have set up rogue Twitter accounts, which cannot be controlled by the state to continue getting their message out there. If you're on Twitter, click here to find the list and to follow the rogue accounts of those agencies you are most interested in.

Potentially even more worrying (though apparently it may be only a temporary step) is that the new administration will be directly vetting the reports written by the EPA - you can read more about this here. 

Now more than ever we need people to speak out for the environment and on climate change. It is appalling that organisations should be censored in this way but very heartening that so many are showing that they won't be defeated on this.

Seeds of Blood and Beauty by Ann Lindsay

Subtitled Scottish Plant Explorers this book outlines the lives, achievements and discoveries of the main Scottish botanists from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most of them were pitifully paid (even for the standards of the day), many died young from tropical diseases or were caught up in war zones or suffered fatal accidents (David Douglas whose name was given to the Douglas Fir, died when he apparently fell down a trap for wild cattle in Hawaii though there are suspicions he may have been murdered). Only Robert Fortune seemed to make a real living out of his botanical adventures, thanks in part to finding a commercial publisher for his books. (Fortune's life story is fictionalised in Sara Sheridan's excellent novel The Secret Mandarin which I reviewed here).

The book is obviously well researched and includes details of the botanists' families and the voyages they made, many of them as surgeons to the Royal Navy. However the book could really have benefited from better editing. It's littered with grammatical errors, misused words, overly convoluted sentences and badly organised paragraphs.

If this book had been around when I had been a young botany student I would have found it both an inspiration and a cautionary tale!

Seeds of Blood and Beauty by Ann Lindsay, published by Birlinn

Disclaimer: I won this book in a Facebook competition run by Perth and Kinross Countryside Trust

haiku

red skies
above the roofs
two crows fight