The wildflower meadow in Spylaw Park alongside Edinburgh's Water of Leith looks beautiful at the moment.
When I walked there yesterday, there were a few Large White Butterflies and a variety of bees, though not as many as one might hope to see on a sunny July day.
Another place where the wildflower meadows are looking wonderful at the moment is Lauriston Farm, Edinburgh's Agro-ecology Co-operative - the topic of this week's post on my Substack blog.
Subtitled "Secrets from the Rainforest Roof" this classic from the mid 1980s celebrates the wildlife of tropical rainforests around the world. Mitchell (currently director of the Global Canopy Programme) was a pioneering arboreal naturalist, as such he was influential in developing methods for studying the rainforest canopy, by constructing walkways close to the tops of the trees.
This beautifully written and lavishly illustrated book looks at many aspects of rainforest ecology, from the relationships between pollinators and plants to the sex lives of Orang-utans to the mystery of the Calvaria tree in Mauritius, which were all ageing and unable to produce a new generation because their seeds had originally been eaten and then excreted by the Dodo, it was eventually found that the turkey had a similar enough digestive system and so the Calvaria was saved from extinction.
Mitchell clearly shows how understanding the relationships between different organisms can be of significant benefit, not only to securing the future of the rainforests, but also in enabling local agriculture to thrive: "In the past, tropical Brazil nut farmers wondered why their trees' multi-million dollar crop began to fail, until it was shown that the carpenter bees responsible for pollinating the Brazil nut trees had vanished along with the forest that used to surround the plantation."
It is notable, that even writing in 1986, Mitchell was well aware of the fragility of rainforest ecosystems, writing, for example, that in the USA: "Olive sided Flycatchers and Grey Vireos have dropped about four to eight percent every year since 1966. It seems almost certain that this is due in large part to the destruction of forests in South America, currently estimated at over four million hectares annually." He also expands on the need for arboreal naturalists to fulfil their quest to understand the 'most complex exhibition of life on earth'.
Yet tropical rainforests are still being destroyed across the world....
This is a beautiful and fascinating book that does somehow feel like entering a lost world.
The Enchanted Canopy by Andrew W Mitchell published 1986 by William Collins.
Earlier today, I met a friend for a walk round Arthur's Seat. Before we met, though, I had time to visit the Physic Garden near Holyrood Palace
The Wild Carrots were in full bloom,
with some of them just turning to seed
which are a mass of colour
The Early Bumblebees were enjoying the Scabious flowers
A common sight at this time of year is Rosebay Willow-herb.
I'm continuing to regularly survey butterflies in two sites in Edinburgh. Today, unusually for this year so far, the weather was almost perfect while I was surveying butterflies at Lauriston Farm. I recorded a total of 43 butterflies (which means there will have been a lot more around this hundred acre site.) Not so long ago, we never saw Small Skippers in Scotland, now they are common (they've moved north from England as the climate has been warming) and always nice to see, I saw eight today, including this one:
I also saw a couple of impressive black beetles
a Roe Deer and several birds including House Martins and a Buzzard.
I'm doing transect surveys as part of the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (I walk a particular route on a regular basis and record the butterflies I see). At the moment, though, there is a large scale butterfly survey that anyone in the UK can take part in - Big Butterfly Count.
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There are two forthcoming themed weeks to celebrate nature:
Love Parks Week (26 July - 4 August).
National Marine Week (27 July -11 August) which is longer than a week!
This is a fascinating look at the interactions between ocean currents, winds and living things. Unfortunately, the text is way more scientific than the title leads you to expect. I have a botany degree, which included a good amount of ecology and a module on environmental physics, yet I sometimes found myself having to read some paragraphs a few times to make sure I understood what was really being said. So, this book is definitely not aimed at the interested layperson, which is a shame, as it is a very interesting and important area of study and this book offers lots of valuable insights into how earth systems work and interact.
The book examines various ocean currents and systems such as the Gulf Stream, outlining the routes they take and how they are affected by weather, including temperature and wind. Specific examples are given of how ocean currents and weather between them affect ecosystems, focussing on phytoplankton, the tiny organisms that are the basis of so many food chains. The author also looks at how our changing climate affects 1) the distribution of various species of birds and butterflies - many species are moving northwards as the climate warms - 2) the timing of breeding - many species are now breeding earlier in the year and 3) the stability of ecosystems - where changes in population of one organism that may be directly affected by climate change then affects other species in the wider ecosystem.
Reference is made to a number of scientific studies, profiling some of the scientists who have made significant contributions to the field. The author examines evidence of historical and pre-historical climatic changes, putting things into the long term perspective, arguing overall that humans are definitely altering the climate by our actions but at the same time pointing out that it is more complicated than we may have been led to believe.
Admittedly, it is difficult to make such a complex topic easy to understand and there's nothing worse than dumbing down important science, but on the other hand a little more accessible explanation might have helped make this book more useful to a more general audience, or a more scientific title might have fitted better with the content.
The Dance of Air and Sea by Arnold H Taylor, published (2011) by Oxford University Press.
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I'm delighted to have a haiku included in the Birdsong issue of Haiku Girl Summer.
Yesterday we had a lovely walk through Edinburgh's Hermitage of Braid, starting at Blackford Pond.
The Purple Loosestrife around the pond is currently beautifully in bloom
Walking along from the pond up to Midmar Paddock, we found more Purple Loosestrife, along with Meadowsweet also in full bloom
We were happy to find a few butterflies in the paddock, including Meadow Browns
Small Skippers
and a Red Admiral
Walking from the Paddock down to the Braid Burn we saw this lovely moth, which I was able to identify as a Large Yellow Underwing (the poor thing looked a bit the worse for wear so we encouraged it to move away from the path and into the nearby vegetation)
