30 Days Wild - a different perspective and a strange creature

It's always good to change your perspective on things! I particularly like looking at things at close to ground level, it often gives a good view of small invertebrates. There are no insects that I can see on these white clover flowers alongside the John Muir Walkway near Musselburgh but they look pretty from this low perspective

Also this lovely speckled wood butterfly was quite low down though later it was flying much higher

And does anyone know what this is? Is it some kind of rove beetle or a beetle larva? The photos aren't particularly good, if I'd managed to get my camera out quicker I might have been able to take a photo of it before it crawled into the grass! (Click on the photos for a larger view).

It was also lovely to see the sun again after a few days of constant rain!

30 Days Wild - Volunteer for Nature

As well as 30 Days Wild for the whole of June, this week is Volunteers Week here in the UK. If you have the free time to take part, volunteering is a great way to help nature, enjoy the great outdoors and learn more at the same time!

As many readers of this blog will know, I volunteer each week with the Water of Leith Conservation Trust, helping to look after part of the river. In fact that was what I was doing this morning, in the pouring rain! Just to give an idea of how wet it was, here is the burn that runs into the river at about 8.30 this morning

and here it is at about 10am, with definitely more water running through it.

We've had an exceptionally dry Spring so we need the rain but it has been raining very heavily a lot over the past few days and is set to continue....

One of my main volunteer tasks is to pick litter, I've been provided with a litter picker and I use an old pair of gardening gloves!

I also record the wildlife I see and am contributing to a survey of all the plants and fungi along the river. I've met lots of interesting people (and dogs!) while doing this work and it's a great way to spend time in a lovely woodland and watch it change through the seasons.

I also volunteer with the Woodland Trust as a 'Super Campaigner' (the trust's term, not mine!) which means I use social media to help the trust spread the word about it's campaigns. You may have read some of my blog posts on their campaigns. I recently gave a talk about my volunteering role at the Edinburgh Woodland Trust Volunteer Gathering (which took place at the Water of Leith Visitor Centre) and then lead a guided walk along the river! I was then interviewed for a short video that the trust made for Volunteers Week, you can watch the video here.

If you're interested in volunteering with the Woodland Trust you can find out more here and if you're interested in volunteering with Water of Leith Conservation Trust you can find out more here.

Happy World Environment Day

World Environment Day is today, fitting neatly into 30 Days Wild!

There are three main ways to take part in World Environment Day this year:

Add a photo of a favourite place in nature to the global photo album! (The above photo is from Edinburgh Botanic Gardens). You can do this here.

Take part in an event - you can find out what's happening near you here.

Explore Nature! Find out more here.

Whatever you do, World  Environment Day is a chance to enjoy and celebrate nature and to commit to protecting our natural world so we can continue to enjoy it into the future!

30 Days Wild - identify a new species

Not a new species to science of course (though that would be amazingly exciting!) but a species I've never noticed before! We saw this hoverfly on Friday in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens.

Using the Nature Spot Guide to hoverflies, I identified it as a Narcisus Bulb Fly (Merodon equestris) and then posted it in the UK Hoverflies Facebook group to get a second opinion. Someone in the group confirmed my identification! 

It's really nice to just enjoy nature but it's important to conservation (and interesting too!) to identify the species that we see around us. I've certainly noticed that since I became interested in hoverflies a couple of years ago, the variety in this group of insects has proved to be astonishing!

If you're interested in identifying British wildlife, then there's a list of useful websites on this page of my blog.

30 Days Wild - enjoy an outdoors festival

A nice way to spend time outdoors if the weather is fine is to go along to an outdoors festival! Today we went along to Edinburgh's famous Meadows Festival, which hosts a range of stalls selling items ranging from vintage clothes to garden plants, various food stalls and three music stages! The weather stayed mostly dry and warm for the whole time that we were there and it was very pleasant to listen to the music and enjoy the atmosphere.

30 Days Wild - look out for the youngsters!

This is the time of year when the young birds are around - here's a mute swan family on Inverleith Pond

and over on the Botanic Gardens pond, a moorhen feeds one of its chicks

while the mallard family seems to only have one duckling left (it had five or more last time we were in the Botanics)

and for total unexpectedness, the surprise of several damselflies by the side of Inverleith Pond (I think they were common blue damselflies, if you disagree, let me know in the comments section).

Thanks Crafty Green Boyfriend for the photos in this post (other than the photo of the swans, which I took);

30 Days Wild - Take a Wild detour!

It's the start of 30 Days Wild, the project that encourages everyone to do something wild every day in June! Today I took a slight detour to get to the writing class I was running in Lochend. I got off the bus several stops late (as I often do) and walked into the park. I had got an earlier bus than normal hoping for a longer walk in the park, but unfortunately the bus was very slow so I only got the chance for a short walk and some photos. 

Although you can hardly see them in the photo there's a family of mute swans in amongst the trees to the left of the island. They have 5 or 6 cygnets. I noticed them as I walked into the park, but would have been too far away to have been able to take a decent photo. By the time I was close enough they had hidden themselves away!

Easier to photograph were the lovely yellow flag irises

and the pretty wildflower meadow planted near the entrance to the park

Near to the park I saw a swift, which flew up into a hole under the guttering of a block of flats! It may well be a nest site, so I'll need to keep an eye on that for part of the swift survey which I'm taking part in.