Lunchtime up Corstorphine HIll

I joined Crafty Green Boyfriend at lunchtime today for a walk round Corstorphine HIll (which is so near his place of work that he walks round the hill most days!).

Many of the umbellifers are covered in red soldier beetles

And the common spotted orchids are looking lovely in the marshy area

Yesterday, on a guided walk I was leading along the Water of Leith in Stockbridge, we came across this ladybird, which is an unusual colour variant of the 2 spot ladybird (more commonly seen in its red form with two black spots)

The Missing Lynx by Ross Barnett

 

15,000 years ago, Britain was home to lynx, bears, wolves, bison and many other species of large mammals. But climate change and the spread of human populations changed the landscape and wiped out wildlife, resulting in the loss of most of our megafauna.

In The Missing Lynx, palaeontologist Ross Barnett introduces us one by one to the magnificent creatures that have been lost from these islands, some of which are globally extinct, others which are missing here but still live on elsewhere and could potentially be reintroduced. He starts from the beginning with the cave hyena which became extinct in Britain 46,000 BC and was globally extinct by 29,000 BC and ends with the European beaver which became extinct in these islands in the 16th century but which has, with some success, been reintroduced.

He examines stone age cave art and carvings to get an idea of our ancient ancestors' relationships with the animals such as cave lions that they shared their world with. He is also a mine of fascinating facts such as how to tell the difference between ivory from mammoths and that from elephants and why some mammoths grew a silky coat. He muses on how difficult it is to tell exactly when wolves became domesticated into dogs and looks at how the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone had a beneficial effect on the area's ecology. and suggests that Scotland would benefit from wolves too, with all the excess deer we have (though those who like to hunt deer for fun would disagree with the wolves return).

He also has this to say about the Scottish wildcat, which still hangs on in parts of the Highlands:

'The wild glens and strachs cannot even support a 5kg (11 pound) wildcat thanks to humans. It will in all likelihood soon be gone. But we won't notice for a little while. The abundance of feral cats and hybrids will ensure that the true wildcat will disappear without fanfare, masked by the abundance of a similar form.'

Barnett looks at the potential of reintroductions, rewilding and resurrection. He suggests that lynx would be an ideal candidate for reintroduction and his argument is very persuasive and includes strategies for reducing antagonism from farmers, my only issue with it is that it would seem to be a shame to put energy, resources and money into reintroducing the lynx when wildcats need so much help to remain here.


This is a fascinating and entertaining book, packed full of interesting facts, enthusiasm for these lost creatures and hope for the renewal rewilding could bring to our landscapes and ecologies.  Read it.


The Missing Lynx by Ross Barnett, published by Bloomsbury.

haiku

a cold breeze
trhough the flower garden -
where are all the bees

Meeting the Duck who Met the Queen

A few days ago the Queen visited Gorgie City Farm where she walked alongside Olive the Duck for a while.

Today we visited the farm and Olive seemed quite at ease with her new found fame

She's a four year old duck who thinks she's human and has very definite likes and dislikes

She has an enclosure and a lovely little house all to herself

In the enclosure next to Olive's are the farm's resident rabbits including Thumper

the other rabbits remained more or less in hiding and I couldn't get photos of them.

The farm sheep seemed very happy

 and this one was happy for Crafty Green Boyfriend to zoom in for a close up

The pigs also seemed very happy 

as did the cows

while the goats just kept eating

The wildlife garden in the farm is looking beautifully lush at the moment

 and is full of bird tables and bird boxes (look carefully in the phto below)

The lime (linden) trees are in full bloom and smell wonderful

and these large poppies are starting to bloom

The farm has created some special bee friendly flower tubs which are scattered around the area

Sadly, there weren't as many insects around as you might hope for on a sunny day but we did see this little solitary bee who Crafty Green Boyfriend caught on camera

and this small tortoiseshell butterfly (also photographed by Crafty Green Boyfriend)

Gorgie City Farm is open every day and is a great place to learn about farming and a lovely green space to enjoy walking round.

The Forest Unseen by David George Haskell

 

This is a wonderful book, full of detailed observations of the plants, fungi and creatures found in one acre of land in an area of old growth Tennessee woodland over the course of a year.

On a personal level, the book would have been more useful if it had focussed on an area in the UK where the species would be familiar to me but that isn't a criticism of the book. I loved the way that Haskell focussed right in to the smallest details (including for example pollen grains and ticks) and used these close observations as a way into expanding his writing into wider ecological topics. It's not just tiny things that he notices of course, he pays attention to everything that comes close to the area he's studying, including vultures and salamanders:

'The female [salamander] seeks out a rock crevice or hollow log in which to lay her eggs. She then wraps herself around them, remaining in the nest hole for six weeks, longer than most songbirds sit on their nests. She rotates the eggs to stop the developing embryos from sticking to the sides. She also eats any egg that dies, preventing mold from growing and killing the whole clutch.'

This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in looking closely at nature in their patch and reveals just how much is going on in a small area of woodland.


The Forest Unseen by David George Haskell published by Penguin.

If you're interested in reading more by Haskell, he wrote this excellent article about birdsong.  

Searching for a bird friendly olive oil

It had never crossed my mind that olive oil could be environmentally unfriendly, until I read this article which outlines how many producers of the oil use suction to remove the olives from the trees, in the process suctioning out and killing millions of birds a year. I knew that lots of birds were killed in the Mediterranean countries but I had previously thought it was mostly due to hunters shooting them or catching them on lime sticks. The fact that olive oil was implicated in this was a total shock.

So I started researching for a bird friendly olive oil. I guessed that 'hand picked' would be a good indicator of bird friendly. But many producers don't say how they harvest the olives (though most do say how they process the oil - virgin or extra virgin olive oil is pressed rather than treated with chemicals and this is shown on the label by 'produced by mechanical process only' or similar wording.)

I recently saw the film Virgin and Extra at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (you can read my review here) and it seems that the olive farms of Jaen in Spain mostly use manual means to harvest the olives. It would be necessary to research this to find out more, but The Green Gold Olive Oil Company certainly harvests its grapes manually and so is bird friendly.

Locally available in Edinburgh (from Real Foods) Lesbian Donkey is produced by organic methods on the hillsides of the Greek Island of Lesbos, with olives picked without machinery - the trees are shaken to bring the olves down.  I've bought my first bottle of Lesbian Donkey and will review it once I've started using it. (My current organic extra virgin olive oil is possibly bird friendly itself, but the makers haven't got back to me to confirm this and I'd rather know for certain).

There's a useful article in Ethical Consumer here, which outlines the issue and looks into which major suppliers of olive oil may be bird friendly. 

So if you care about the effect of agriculture on nature, it's well worth checking out whether your olive oil is bird friendly.  The trick is to look for hand picked and to be aware that produced by mechanical means only refers to the processing of olives into oil (and indicates Virgin or Extra Virgin) and not to harvesting methods.

Urban Gulls

This is the view across from our living room window - a nest of lesser black backed gulls, currently with two youngsters. They love walking round the chimney stack and occasionally stretch and flap their wings. The vegetation at the front is annoying for us as it stops us getting a consistently good view of what's going on but it's great for the birds as it offers really good shade to stop them overheating.

Photos by Crafty Green Boyfriend.

Urban black headed gulls have a bad reputation, that is undeserved. Here's a really good article on why we should love our urban gulls.