Beautiful Butterflies and Other Creatures at Musselburgh

Today was a beautiful day for a walk round the Lagoons at Musselburgh. A beautiful day for butterflies too. This peacock, looking in peak condition was basking in the sun

while in the wooded area near the bird hides there were at least 5 speckled woods

 I recorded thes and the whilte butterflies I saw in the Big Butterfly Count, which is open until 12 August. 

This seven spot ladybird had found a cosy little place to rest

and these tiny little pollen beetles were burrowing their way into the flower as far as they could

Lots of hoverflies around too, though the wind was high which made taking the photos difficult.The larger one in trhis photo is a pied hoverfly and I need to identify the other (it may be a long hoverfly, but I'm not sure). There were other species I need to identify too (The Nature Spot guide to UK Hoverflies is my favourite resource to help with this task).

There were also plenty of birds including these eider ducks

And away in the distance in the photo below, you can see Arthur's Seat, which is where we had an evening walk the other day, which you can read about here.

Beautiful Evening on Arthurs Seat

We had a lovely walk up Arthur's Seat yesterday evening. Everywhere looked beautiful

We had hoped to see some swifts gathering to catch insects before their long migration back to Africa but we didn't see any. We did however have a wonderful view of a kestrel hovering over the grass, obviously with its eye on a vole or a mouse.

This caterpillar of the cinnabar moth chose a silly place to eat in the middle of the path

I was very happy to be able to get some reasonably good photos as the light faded - the wonderful Salisbury Crags and the lights of Edinburgh

Once Were Fields

Green becomes concrete
for wheels to glide over
quicker.

Inexorable as rainfall
landscape flies past,
transmutes into shopping malls,
office blocks and science parks.

Grey sky reflects in glass houses
and everyone is throwing stones.


Poem previously published in The Journal and originally posted on this blog in 2007. Still a sadly relevant poem.

The collage is made from 100% recycled magazines and is a detail from a flier, on the reverse of which there is a copy of the poem against the background of a photo of a city street. 

I posted another poem from the past today on my Shapeshifting Green blog, you can read it here. 

Snapper by Brian Kimberling

 


Nathan Lochmueller studies birds for just enough money to scrape a living in Indiana. Other than that he lives a fairly aimless existence and is in love with Lola.

I really enjoyed the natural history elements of this novel, the descriptions of fieldwork and observations of the birds:

"Neighbouring pairs [of wood thrushes] sing to each other in a chain of call and response that occurs in every wood in the Midwest. ..... A male indigo bunting will try desperately to get your attention if you stray near its nest..."

The book also captures beautifully the melancholy of a naturalist surrounded by landscape and wildlife that is disappearing.

I had hoped that the natural history element would be matched by the humour of the opening few pages, but that mostly wasn't to be. I enjoyed the book and the disjointed nature of the chapters seemed to nicely complement the disjointed nature of Nathan's life, but it would have been even better if the laughter had continued.

Snapper by Brian Kimberling published by Tinder Press

Thumper the rabbit and friends at Gorgie City Farm

We had a lovely trip to Gorgie City Farm yesterday. There are lots of new animals to get to know including Thumper, a large, fluffy bunny who is blind in one eye

and his friend Lily

Nest door to the rabbits are the micro pigs who are still young but even when fully grown will be less than knee high..... These are specially bred to be pets and they're very cute

The farm also has two young cows that seem to have lovely natures, enjoying being petted by the visitors

and the goats seem very happy in their enclosure

while this jackdaw was hanging around

Hidden around the farm are several scarecrows, children are invited to wander round the farm and find all of them

Adults may be more interested in the new 'Build Your Own Veg Box' idea where for a suggested donation of £5 you can put together your own vegetable box

The farm is a brilliant place for city children to learn about farming and also about nature. The beautiful flowers round the farm attract many insects, including these two small white butterflies which were engaged in a courtship display (or at least the male was!)

several species of bee including early bumble bees (that's their species name, though here they seem to be later in appearing than most other bumble bees!)

and this that looks like some sort of cuckoo bee

and of course hoverflies including several marmalade hoverflies

If you've never visited Gorgie Farm, I can definitely recommend it! If you're outside of Edinburgh and want to find your nearest city farm then hop over to the website of the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens.

Beautiful butterflies

The small copper is one of my favourite butterflies, it's so small and fragile looking with beautiful patterning. In the past it used to be reliably seen on Corstorphine HIll in Edinburgh but is much less frequent now. So we were delighted to see two today, including this one that posed for Crafty Green Boyfriend to take its photo

 There were also fifteen large white butterflies. I recorded all these butterflies in the Big Butterfly Count which runs until 12 August.

There were also loads of hoverflies around including several pied hoverflies

Corstorphine Hill is also well known for its views over Edinburgh

Iceman - a film review

Iceman is a reconstruction of life as it may have been for our long ago ancestors, inspired by the discovery of ‘Ötzi The Iceman’, the oldest known human mummy found in 1991, approximately 5300 years after his death. 

A family group is living peacefully beside a stream in the Öztal Alps. Their leader Kelab (Jürgen Vogel) is responsible for guarding the holy shrine. While he is out hunting, the settlement is attacked, everyone is murdered, including his wife and son, and the sacred shrine is stolen. Kelab then sets out to seek revenge. 

This film beautifully recreates what life must have been like, with scenes showing religious rituals, hunting, loving relationships and violent confrontations. There is little dialogue and what there is takes place in Rhaetic a now extinct language (and there are no subtitles), but you don't need to understand the words to be able to follow the story, in fact the choice of language adds to the authenticity of the film. Every detail of the film in fact, including clothing, weapons and housing, was researched to be as authentic as possible and this is probably as close as we will get to knowing how life was for our ancestors. Hard and violent in the main. 

Iceman is well worth watching and is screening at Edinburgh Filmhouse until Thursday 2 August. 

You can find out more about Otzi, the man whose mummified remains inspired this film here.