Walking in the Pentlands

Last week as part of our staycation, we made several day trips in the Edinburgh area. I blogged yesterday about our trip to North Berwick and today I'm sharing photos from our walk across the Pentlands from Flotterstone to Balerno.

We got a bus down to Flotterstone and had a cup of tea in the lovely cafe that is part of the Countryside Rangers Centre

It's a lovely cosy little cafe with a good snack menu, well worth dropping into before or after a long walk across the Pentlands.

There's a nice little carved bench just near the cafe

which marks the beginning of the trail over the hills.

Nearby is a replica of a sheep stell where sheep used to be herded for lambing, shearing or marking or to protect them from poor weather

The scenery here features gentle hills

and the picturesque Glencorse Reservoir, which is used for boating and fishing

 The routes are mostly well sign posted

We went further into the hills, though staying mostly on the lower paths to avoid vertigo

we were amazed by the numbers of house martins and swallows flying around in certain areas and delighted to see this painted lady

 along with lots of these large caterpillars, in one area there were caterpillars everywhere we looked! I don't know what they will grow up to be, if you do recognise the species let me know in the comments.

Edited to add: Steve from the very useful Wildlife Insight Caterpillars webpages tells me this is a fox moth caterpillar.

 
We were disappointed not to see any rabbits despite this sign

We stopped for a snack at the side of Harlaw Reservoir (which is one of the reservoirs that feeds into the Water of Leith)

and we wandered along the woodland path by the side of the reservoir. We were particularly impressed by this fly agaric toadstool (warning this is poisonous)

We finally walked along the side of Treipmuir reservoir

 to Red Moss from where it's a short walk to Balerno (past the Scottish SPCA Animal Rescue Centre where we adopted our bunny Anya all those years ago) where we caught a bus back to the centre of Edinburgh.

The Pentland Hills are a Regional Country Park and there a number of walking routes through the area. You can find out more about these routes here. It's a great place to explore and enjoy the outdoors.

A Day in North Berwick

Last week during our staycation, we went on some lovely walks in and around Edinburgh. I'm only going to blog about two of them though!

One of our trips was to North Berwick, which is on the coast just outside Edinburgh. It has a lovely beach with great views!

One of the most famous views is over to the Bass Rock, which at most times of the year is white with the gannets that breed in vast numbers there (gannets are one of the few birds that are increasing in number).

Several gannets were flying around and diving into the sea, qhite close to shore. Always a lovely sight. They were joined by the noisy sandwich terns, which were gathering on the rocks.

 
At times we were surrounded by swallows, flying ridiculously fast

These lovely birds will be leaving for their wintering grounds in Africa very soon but it was wonderful to see so many of them flying along the beach and round the town. This young swallow was still being fed by its parents, it's typical of swallows to have a second brood of chicks quite late in the season

Another summer visitor we saw was this wheatear

We were intrigued by this crow, which was carrying something (we couldn't work out what!) in its beak and then started to bury it

There were several ringed plovers on the beach too

and sanderlings too, this is the first time I've got so close to sanderlings, beautiful birds in their smart black and white winter plumage

also in winter plumage was this dunlin 

Such a great day on the beach!

It was also nice to see this little pallet garden in the town, it had won a prize in a recent competition, though annoyingly I seem to have deleted the photo which included the plaque with the competition information!

North Berwick is a lovely town to spend time in, with several nice cafes, craft shops and second hand shops. It's easy to get there by bus or train from Edinburgh.

Thanks to Crafty Green Boyfriend for the bird photos in this post.  

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Apparently there are still places available on my Tuesday evening creative writing beginners class at Tynecastle High starting 24 September, more information and booking here. 

Green Gold by Gabriel Hemery - book review

 

In 1850, John Jeffrey, a young Scottish plant hunter, was sent to find exotic trees in North America and send their seeds back to an elite group of subscribers in Scotland. Jeffery sent collections of seeds and plants and the occasional letter to Scotland, but never sent any journals (which he had promised to do). Eventually he disappeared.

Green Goldis made up of the fictionalised journals of Jeffrey, along with archive letters, labels from his plant collections and minutes from meetings to build a picture of what happened during his travels.

Helpfully the archive materials are marked as such throughout this book, so preventing annoying confusion between fact and fiction.

The fictionalised journals are engrossing and written in a believable style, bringing to life this intriguing early botanist, though some of his attitudes towards environmental concerns and indigenous peoples may be a little more modern than they would in reality have been. The archive materials tend to break the flow of the narrative a little, but add in the historical context for the journal.

As a botanist myself I was particularly interested in how such an early plant hunters trip would have been carried out and the obstacles that Jeffrey's found along the way.

I also love the fact that this book is crowd funded, given that Jeffrey's trip was funded by subscribers, who were given rewards in the form of plant seeds, an early form of crowd funding!

Green Gold by Gabriel Hemery, published by Unbound (2019)

September Sunshine at Edinburgh Botanics

We had some nice trips out last week during our staycation week and I'll blog about some of the them in the next few days. But today I'll share some photos from yesterday's visit to Edinburgh Botanic Gardens.

The weather was beautifully warm and sunny and we spent longer than usual in the gardens. There's always plenty to see but we were particularly interested to see the Edible Gardening display plots, neat the renovated Botanic Cottage, which is an area of the gardens we don't visit as frequently as we do many of the other areas. The plots, many managed by students at the Botanic Gardens are looking wonderful at the moment

Several of the students have patches of wildflowers in amongst the vegetables

some of the sunflowers are well past their best but some are still glorious

and the whole area was buzzing with bees and hoverflies like this Syrphus sp hoverfly

a few butterflies were still flying round, including this painted lady

 while a scarecrow watches over everything

Escaping from the heat of the open garden we followed the Scottish tree trail

and visited the Chinese pond

there were no birds on this pond, but the other pond had a lively family of moorhens (thanks to Crafty Green Boyfriend for this photo of a very cute young moorhen)

In the cafe this young herring gull was pestering its parent

while a dunnock crept unobtrusively round the tables looking for crumbs (thanks to Crafty Green Boyfriend for this photo too)

So we had a lovely walk round.

The bright sunshine was great for creating lovely shadows on the buildings round Edinburgh, so I posted some 'Shadow Shot Sunday' photos on my Shapeshifting Green blog here. 

Kirkconnel Flow - a former National Nature Reserve in Decline?

Our last trip while we were on holiday in Dumfries and Galloway was to Krikconnel Flow which is a Scite of Special Scientific Interest. This reserve is mostly made up of raised peat bog, which is one of the most threatened habitats in the world, surrounded by mixed woodland.

The reserve is beautiful and always worth visiting, with a high chance of seeing common lizards

(See this post for photos of more common lizards from our last visit there in 2016, when it was hot and sunny and there seemed to be lizards everywhere we looked! We saw far fewer this year, largely because it wasn't so sunny).

It seems, sadly, that the bog area of the reserve isn't being managed as well as it should be to keep it as a peat bog - there are lots of birch saplings growing in the bog area which will eventually take over and transform the area into woodland.

 Of course woodland is a good thing, but as I pointed out above, raised peat bog is one of the most threatened habitats in the world. Last time we visited, Kirkconnel Flow was a National Nature Reserve, but no longer is. This denotification will probably be due to its not having been looked after properly and so my guess now is that it will be allowed to become woodland and this area of valuable peat bog will be lost. After our last visit to Kirkconnel Flow, I wrote to Scottish Natural Heritage about the state of the site (which was even then already lbviously in decline as a bog) and never received a reply. Another letter is due I think.

On the positive side, the woodland around the bog is still beautiful

and is full of interesting fungi and lichens

Edited to add: this is the reassuring reply I received from the Reserves Manager for Southern Scotland of Scottish Natural Heritage:

In relation to the raised peat bog, we are currently finalising funding to carry out extensive work on the bog this winter. The work will address the birch regeneration, raise the water table further along the south western side and address areas of continued water loss.  We had to make a change to our timetable in order to receive our funding through the Scottish Government Peatland Action stream, so although a bit delayed, the work will be large scale and hopefully very effective.

I took over the management of the reserves for Southern Scotland at the beginning of 2018 just at the point of de-declaration, as I understand in the evaluation process the site was seen more as an area of local rather than national interest.  Given the unique and specialist species that we have on site I can see why this may seem a bit odd, however, most importantly for the natural heritage interest, the reserve is owned by SNH and will continue to be managed as a reserve with the same objectives and responsibilities as before.   Our new CEO is committed to the protection of our wildlife habitats and has led a much invigorated approach to our suite of reserves. We secured another reserve officer to our area at the end of 2018 to cover the work at Kirkconnell Flow and the site is already showing signs of benefitting from this additional resource.

Mersehead RSPB reserve

Our next day out while we were staying in Dumfries and Galloway was to Mersehead, an RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) reserve on the Solway coast. Like Caerlaverock (which I blogged about yesterday) it is a great place to see geese in the winter. It's also a great place for seeing smaller birds too, I remember the first time I visited in particular, the hedges all seemed to be packed full of songbirds.

The RSPB information centre on the reserve is small but welcoming

and there is plenty to see as you wander round

there are wildlife garden areas

lichens everywhere

woodland (where we saw a spotted flycatcher, but it didn't want to look at the camera so we couldn't get a photo).

the speckled wood butterflies were easier to get photos of than the flycatchers, thanks to Crafty Green Boyfriend for this shot

there's a beautifully decorated bird hide

which illustrates some of the birds you can see from the hide!

There is a wonderful coastal walk

Children had been making sand pictures of animals for a competition - this bee is I think my favourite of the ones we saw

 Mersehead is always a lovely place to visit, plenty to see and wonderful walks even if there aren't lots of birds around.