I like to go goshawk spotting on crisp, clear days in late winter. I pick my spot to sit down and scan the treetops according to the latest court case for killing them. It's the only reliable way to know where they're around.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Leisure
Wildlife highlight of the day
(7223 posts)-
Posted 6 years ago #
-
@sallyhinch, @Iwrats
Sounds like the project posts all have an large elment of "gonnae &*@!*& stop that" - though worded more diplomatically...
Project manager will: Liaise with landowners, conservation groups and stakeholders. / Advise landowners on how to welcome eagles. / Advise stakeholders on their concerns about eagles.
(They will also get to FEED EAGLETS.)
I love the idea of formally welcoming eagles to your land. One part Tolkien, one part bird cult.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@unhurt
Landowners know perfectly well how to welcome eagles. Deer forest owners love to have them around and leave the gralloch out deliberately. Grouse moor owners also leave stuff out for them, generally well seasoned with Carbofuran.
I shall enquire of my Eagle Friend what the word in the glens is on this project.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Had a moment of delight this morning when there were umpteen ducks sitting under the thawed out patch under one of the bridges, all swimming in the same direction against the wind and "flow" of the canal.
I presumed this was to avoid being driven back and onto the ice and getting a cold duck-arse.
This little moment of connection with the ducks, for some reason, made me very happy. The same reason I imagine as that which has caused this thread to exist.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Owls hooting through Heriot watt just there
Posted 6 years ago # -
Last night 2 deer, I assume mother and fawn, on a residential street about a mile from home. Passed about 30 yds from me.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@Iwrats my Eagle Friend
Are they an actual eagle? (No, no, don't disappoint me.)
Posted 6 years ago # -
@unhurt/IWRATS please see the Chris petit/ Iain Sinclair film The Falconer
Posted 6 years ago # -
Really good view of the Inverleith Park water rail last night. Too cold to be shy? Owls hooting in the Dene later too.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Regular readers of IWRATS' wildlife highlights will know that I am inordinately fond of sparrowhawks. In several decades of enjoying their presence weekly I have only seen male hawks on five occasions. They are tiny, swift and utterly discreet.
So it was with great pleasure that I flushed an immature one from a blackthorn bush on Stanedykehead and watched it do the ekranoplan thing, skimming the tops of the furrows in the field as it made good its escape.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Very big finch eating berries? On tree down my garden. Beak not big enough to be a hawfinch but was pleasurable watching it eat its lunch as I prepared our lunch
Posted 6 years ago # -
My human Eagle Friend has cogitated. Thinks the Southern Upland plan is probably cosmetic, but still useful in turning a spotlight on the Duke of [Redacted] and his pals.
He's very, very skeptical that anyone will allow chicks to be removed from safety and brought up in the line of fire.
Posted 6 years ago # -
2 foxes (about 2 mins apart) on the Fife Coastal shared path this morning, !!!bushy tails!!!
Posted 6 years ago # -
Two blackbirds deciding they'd had enough of this mortal coil, and flying into the side of a car in front of me this morning. Definitely lowlight rather than highlight, of course.
Posted 6 years ago # -
A deer. On Barnton Ave.
It ran up Easter Park Drive, across my path (about 8m ahead of me) and onto the south side pavement.
(I was headed west.)
Probably a female. Was running skittishly. Seemed very nervous. Don't know where it went after I passed it.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Don't want to be a climate alarmist or a small batch artisinal data purveyor but a sparrow with a beakful of feathers and two wrens engaged in territorial singing/fighting. This was not standard pre-Christmas fare in Scotland.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Meanwhile in cars must be protected from messy alive things news:
Anti-pigeon spikes placed on tree branches to stop birds pooing on cars have been branded "idiotic".
The spikes on Pembroke Road, Clifton, Bristol, were erected by the management company of nearby Bartlett Court flats to protect residents' "expensive cars".
Hillcrest Estate Management said the trees attract roosting pigeons and it needs to protect vehicles at the "prestigious development".
Posted 6 years ago # -
@unhurt
You can't seriously be suggesting pigeon nappies?
Posted 6 years ago # -
Perhaps breed a tree with an additional undercanopy of absorbent leaves beneath all possible roosting-points?
Posted 6 years ago # -
Or genetically engineer pigeons that don't poo?
Posted 6 years ago # -
@Iwrats I give you this extract from The Once and Future King by T.H. White
Arthur presented Sir Lancelot with an inter-mewed jerfalcon, with which to keep himself amused. This was a great compliment, for jerfalcons were only supposed to be used by kings. At any rate that is what the Abbess Juliana Berners tell us - perhaps incorrectly. An emperor was allowed an eagle, a king could have a jerfalcon, and after that there was the peregrine for an earl, the Merlin for a lady, the goshawk for a yeoman, the sparrow hawk for a priest, and the musket for a holy-water clerk. Lancelot was pleased with his present, and settled down busily in competition with the other angry falconers, who were hard at work criticising each other's methods and sending each other messages of sugary venom and getting yellow about the eyeballs.
Hawking, as James the First pointed out, is an extreme stirring up of the passions. It is because Hawks themselves are furious creatures, and the people who associate with them catch it.
Posted 6 years ago # -
The whole bit from The Sword in the Stone where Wart is a hawk in the mews is also dead good.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Neil Gaiman says of T H White's work 'as good as anything anyone has ever written'
In my The Once and Future King there is an afterword by Sylvia Townsend Warner that does not hold back on the man himself. He was a bad man I fear but his writing to me is sublime.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Oh, yes. (The Goshawk is really good. Though also an awful way to treat a bird!)
Posted 6 years ago # -
Note to self: once decking gone, cut some wee holes in the fence.
Posted 6 years ago # -
A squirrel gathering leaves in its mouth before cautiously (for a squirrel) ascending a tree, presumably to use them to insulate its drey. It met another squirrel on a branch half-way up and I half-expected this to result in a leafy shower given the boisterousness of squirrel interplay, but after a brief pause it continued climbing without incident and disappeared out of sight from my grounded perspective.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Wildlife lowlight:
We love cars so much, we destroy nature for them"There’s a world where fearsome beasts roar through every village, town and city, every hour of the day. These creatures kill hundreds of children and adults every year. They belch toxic gases that hasten death in many thousands. And yet we genuflect to their shiny bodies – so much so that we ban birds from trees to stop their droppings defacing the skins of the beasts resting below... I’ve recently read stories lamenting the loss of children’s freedom because of the car, and urging government to change transport policy to help pedestrians and cyclists. They date from 1974."
Posted 6 years ago # -
A buzzard lamenting the recent loss of woodland beside the Drum estate.
Posted 6 years ago #
Reply »
You must log in to post.
posts
