Nesting Lesser Black Backed Gulls

I love watching this nest from our living room window. The Lesser Black Backed Gulls nested later than usual this year as they first had to get through an extended territorial dispute with a painr of Herring Gulls. But they kept the Herring Gulls off this prime nesting spot and now have two chicks. 

We'll watch the chicks as they grow up. Once they get to a certain size, they'll leave the small nest site and drop down to the flat roof, that you can't see in the photo but which sits in between the roofs that you can see. This flat roof offers a perfect nursery for the chicks and they'll spend many a happy hour chasing each other round and then resting in the shade. Lesser Black Backed Gulls have nested at this site for many years now and always provide great entertainment! 

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It's time to vote for the Woodland Trust's Tree of the Year! There are ten trees to choose from, each with its own story - trees that have inspired poetry and music and trees that have seen historical events. Find out more and vote here. 
 

A Good Day for Butterflies

 I was carrying out a butterfly survey this morning at Edinburgh's Agroecology Project at Lauriston Farm. After a rainy early morning, the day turned into a perfect day for butterflies. I saw over 80 in total, including this Comma 

 and this Small Tortoiseshell 

The Big Butterfly Count starts on 18 July and lasts until 10 August. You can find out more about this excellent citizen science project here. My latest post on my Crafty Green Poet Substack focuses on butterflies too, you can read it here. You can subscribe to the Substack to receive each issue directly into your inbox, though of course you may already get too many emails! 
 

Sunshine in the Cemetery

 It's pouring down just now, but at the weekend it was beautifully sunny and we had a lovely walk round North Merchiston Cemetery. This is one of the garden cemeteries of Edinburgh, which is no longer used for burials (unless you already have a family plot) and is mostly managed for wildlife. 

We were pleased to see several butterflies, including this Speckled Wood  

and this moth, which I  think is a Cream Wave Moth, though please correct me if I'm wrong, there are several similar looking species

 

Walks in East Lothian

On Saturday we had a lovely walk along the John Muir Walkway from Musselburgh to the Bird Hides at the old ash lagoons at Levenhall Links. 

Along the way, there's a lovely view across the mouth if the River Esk to the Firth of Forth with Edinburgh and Arthur's Seat in the background 

 

The boating pond was looking pretty 

 and the wildflower meadows were looking wonderful

 

We were delighted to see several butterflies and moths in amongst these flowers. We were particularly happy to see this female Common Blue, which despite its name, isn't actually common around Edinburgh, the photo below shows the butterfly's upper wings

and the photo below shows her pretty underwings

We were also very happy to see a couple of Six Spot Burnet Moths  

a Painted Lady butterfly, who looked quite tattered 

and this handsome hoverfly, which I don't think I've ever seen before, but have identified as Chrysotoxum bicinctum

We saw plenty of birds too, including these Black Tailed Godwits (thankfully one of them had raised wings, helping us to identify them as Black tailed rather than the, in many ways, very similar Bar Tailed Godwits.

The male Eider ducks are moulting and look very different in this  plumage (known as eclipse plumage). In the photo below, the male Eider at the front is in breeding plumage, the rest are males in eclipse plumage.
 

 There are lots of Seven Spot Ladybirds this year, this pair were obviously doing their best to secure the future of the species

Last week I had also visited Dunbar to have lunch with a friend. We enjoyed watching the Kittiwakes at their nesting site at the harbour, these are the prettiest of gulls and are named for their distinctive call, which really does sound like 'kittiwake, kittiwake' 

 and more Seven Spot Ladybirds, this one just next to one of the reflective cubes at the Dunbar Battery, which has recently been reimagined as an events venue. 

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Big Butterfly Count takes place this year from 18 July - 10 August. Find out how to get involved here.  

A Single Swallow by Horatio Clare

 

Swallows are wonderful birds, one of our most familiar summer migrants (though not as common as they once were). 

In this book, the author aims to follow the approximate route taken by a migrating Barn Swallow from South Africa to South Wales. He travels overland and only rarely sees swallows, so the book is mostly about the experiences of travelling across Africa, interwoven with occasional sightings of swallows, details about their biology and habits and the place of swallows in religion, folklore and literature. The author comments on local customs, political borders and environmental degradation (particularly deforestation). 

He notes that birdwatching as we in the UK know it, is a 'luxury' and not something that people across Africa generally engage in, though he does meet some swallow experts and fans along the way and learns some local names for swallow, including Nyankalema the Zambian name which translates as 'the one that never gets tired'. 

Swallows meet with many perils on their journey, including needing to cross the Sahara, storms, collisions with traffic and predation. Yet every year they return to our shores to delight us. 

"they seemed to delight in chaos, charging zig-zag into space, which was at once empty and full, as though playing chicken with physics."

A Single Swallow by Horatio Clare, published (2009) by Vintage.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Single Swallow by Horatio Clare, published (2009) by Vintage.  

Orchids and Hoverflies on Corstorphine Hill

I told Crafty Green Boyfriend about the orchids I'd seen on Corstorphine Hill on my butterfly survey the other day and he was keen to see them for himself and to take some photos. So we took a trip there yesterday and here are some of the photos he took:

 

We went into the Corstorphine Hill Walled Garden and were very pleased with how many hoverflies we saw. After hardly seeing any Babded Hoverflies (Syrphus sp) over the past couple of years, we were delighted to see so many! Click on the photo below to zoom in and see how many hoverflies you can count on the Fox and Cubs flowers. 

We were also happy to see a number of other hoverflies, including this Sericomyia silentis, sometimes known as the Bog Hoverfly

and this Long Hoverfly (Sphaerophoria sp)

We continued our walk around the hill and saw a number of butterflies, including this Small Skipper

We were also happy to see some rabbits, though we were only able to get these two on camera.  

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I'm happy to have a haiku in  this selection on Haiku Girl Summer.  

 

Orchids and Butterflies

 Today I carried out a butterfly survey on Corstorphine Hill for the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme. Before I saw my first butterfly, I noticed how beautiful the Common Spotted Orchids were! 

 

Their leaves are very spotted, which is how they get their name 

I was also pleased to see several butterflies during the walk: 4 Red Admrials; 9 Ringlets and 5 Small Skippers. Butterflies are generally in decline so it's good to see these numbers, even though years ago, you would have hoped to see more. 

 

The Small Skipper (see above photo) is a butterfly that has been able to move northwards into Scotland as a result of climate change. 

Seven Spot Ladybirds are having a great year this year (How many ladybirds can you see in the photo below?)

I was also happy to see this field of Lady's Bedstraw: 

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My latest Substack post is now live! The last in my series celebrating The Wildlife Trusts' 30 Days Wild campaign, it focuses on art and nature. You can read it here. 

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I was surprised but very happy to win the Gaelic section of the Scottish Book Trust's most recent 50 Word Short Story Contest. You can read my story (with an English translation) here.