Wintry Reflections

The weather is still cold and snowy here, very beautiful! Here are a couple of reflections that show some of the beauty of a wintry Edinburgh! I took the first photo along the Water of Leith on Monday.

Crafty Green Boyfriend took this second shot in Princes Street Gardens on Christmas Day.

No reflections along the Union Canal, which is frozen solid - hopefully some photos of that tomorrow!

for Weekend Reflections

Imagining Seals by Susanna Roxman

This is a lovely collection of poetry full of seals, scenes from Edinburgh, myths and self portraits. it's the birds that are my favourites though, from Waxwings, Dundee:

The soft whistling came first
as if they dared me to emerge,
and there they sat, along branches and ledges,
twenty attentive dusky pink peaches.

I'm still waiting for waxwings to appear in Ednburgh this year, and there won't be many berries for them to eat, as the thrushes have eaten them all. I did see some wild geese flying over the nearby roofs recently and am reminded of this by this extract from Wild Geese, Scania:

Later, above the city, they move back
in great broken contexts, noise
following shortly, such unerring flair
for perfection, how to pierce the setting sun.

The writing is beautiful and sure footed with a good understanding of line break and rhythm.

Imagining Seals by Susanna Roxman, published by Dionysia Press.

Flight Paths

Once I had a tree house here
in the branches, ivy covered
next door the blue tits' mossy home
full of scruffy chicks.


Hidden in my tree-top den
I watched the squirrels, fed the birds
and read the Enid Blyton books
my mother never liked.


As a child I always thought
this place would never disappear -
next door's blue tits always there
with gaping mouths to feed.


Now I cannot find the place
among the piles of sawn down trees,
hand painted hoardings shout at me:
Danger Men at Work.


They're cutting down the woods,
the ivy, branches and the nests.
The worried blue tits scream in fear
now they have no home.


When the work is all complete
this will be runway number two -
tourist flights will leave from here
where once the blue tits flew.




(this is an old poem I found when I was digging around in my poetry box over the Christmas holiday, I've never had a tree house in reality, for those who might wonder!

Remember to feed the birds, they need all the help they can get in this freezing weather!)

Scrabble bag

I mentioned a few days ago that I had worked on a craft project over the holidays. Well here it is, a scrabble bag for my parents, whose scrabble set is so old it came without a bag for the letters. I made it from scrap material. The letters were much easier to embroider than I thought they would be!

Talking of scrap material, I found a few sets of fabric samples (in perfect condition) left out with the rubbish the other day and I took them, they'll come in useful for some small fabric crafts I'm sure!

It really is this cold....

We have an extra Bank Holiday for New Year in Scotland so Crafty Green Boyfriend and I went off along the Water of Leith again. Ankle deep snow as it was two weeks ago and only patches of ice, which made for mostly comfortable walking. There weren't as many birds around as last week, but we enjoyed watching this dunnock (above) feeding on the seedheads of nettle.

There were some magnificent icicles by the weir at Colinton.

Above the weir there were three goosanders, two males one of which seemed to be trying his best to impress the one female. A dipper and a mallard swam around close by, unimpressed by the displays. The photo just shows the two male goosanders.

All photos taken by Crafty Green Boyfriend. I've cropped the bird photos to make the birds more visible.

Winter thrushes and other birds

I said yesterday that I would update you on the birds we had seen over Christmas. On Christmas Day morning, I noticed a lot of big thrushes sitting in a tree in a neighbouring backgreen and flying over our roof. We then went out into our backgreen and found over 50 fieldfares sitting in the trees and flying back and forth. I've never seen so many anywhere, and in Edinburgh I've felt lucky to see any at all, as they're not really an urban bird. Later that morning we wandered over to Princes Street Gardens, which were full of redwings (see photos, taken by Crafty green Boyfriend, the building in the photos is Edinburgh Castle, click on them to see a bigger view). These are another thrush species and I've often seen them in Edinburgh parks, but never this many - there were hundreds, flying across the gardens, landing in rowan trees and stripping them of their berries (they did a good job as you can tell from the first photo!).

We also saw a very large flock of long tailed tits along the Water of Leith. They're a beautiful bird, that I've seen in much bigger numbers in the last couple of years than I used to. As we stood still to watch them, they fluttered towards us, chattering away under their breath....

Snowy Start to the New Year

It's snowing again! I've never seen so much snow over such a long period of time! The photo is from our walk along the Water of Leith on Monday, wonderful birdwatching as ever, though I'll post about holiday birdwatching tomorrow!

Hope everyone had an enjoyable break, whether you were celebrating Christmas or not. We had a lovely time, lots of snowy walks and I've worked on a lot of poems and a craft project. I hope to finish the craft project very soon and share it here.

Best wishes for 2010, let's hope its a good one!