1. “two feet“ - really?
4.”every spring” - every other spring would be an improvement for places like the WoL path around Colinton.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Leisure
Wildlife highlight of the day
(7223 posts)-
Posted 6 years ago #
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@chdot
1. Really. Landowners started charging for the gravel off the hillsides once they were sure they wouldn't be shot for asking.
4. It didn't last long - mid 1760s. Then disrepair and loss.
Posted 6 years ago # -
“
A kingfisher in the grounds of Lauriston Castle
“
Posted 6 years ago # -
Very small brown diving bird diving into glencorse reservoir. Either a female tufted duck or a little grebe. At the moment I am going grebe. Little grebe winter colours, aka Dabchick
Posted 6 years ago # -
@gembo: I've seen little grebe on the bit of Threipmuir reservoir west of the avenue bridge so I wouldn't be at all surprised to see one on Glencorse.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Really beautiful account of the advance and retreat of plants and animals in Britain from 5000BCE to today. Britain has just become an island:-
"There’s a final rush to beat the rising seas. The last tree to reach dry land in the newly minted British Isles is quite possibly the box. There are, perhaps, twenty-six species of tree now marooned on these islands. Juniper was here early, and has already spread to the far north of Scotland, followed by the silver birch and the Scots pine. There are alder trees along the rivers, lakes and streams. In the south of the country the most common tree has become the small-leaved lime, basking in the warmer climate, but there are also great stretches of oak, ash, hazel and elm. There are beech and hornbeam settled in the south-west. Further north, the oak is dominant, but the hazel is also here in numbers, its nuts spread by red squirrels and birds. The pine and the birch are retreating ever northwards, only surviving further south in the scraps and edges of the broadleaved forest as the shade deepens over the young land. The first oak reaches the Firth of Forth. Rowan and willow, aspen, poplar and the late-arriving hawthorn make their way north and west. Human hunter-gatherers follow through the glades and make temporary clearings in the woods; perhaps they favour and spread the hazel, wild pear, the crab apple and the cherry; there are brown bears, lynxes, wolves, deer, bison, elks and boars in the forest; beavers dam the rivers and fell the trees. This is the wildwood, a place of constant change, a kingdom of trees. A yew berry passes through the gut of a jay and is excreted by the side of a stream in Fortingall, Perthshire, the start of its milliennia-long life journey."
..
"There are colonies of walrus on the seashore and vast schools of grey whale in the teeming seas. Pelicans squabble with puffins. The great auk builds its nests among the distant rocks, although humans have found that its flesh makes a tasty meal and its down the softest of beds. Oak, birch, juniper and pine fill every last crevice of the coastline, while the glades and the fields widen gradually behind them. Perhaps we can now say that humans have replaced climate change as the main factor affecting the woodlands of Britain; in other parts of the world you could even say that humans are starting to affect the world’s climate for the first time, as they torch their forests. The woods of Britain are too wet to burn. Sometime around now we arrive at ‘Peak Forest’: the trees are everywhere, but the tide is turning. People must also be just about everywhere – or is it wolves? – because the European bison becomes extinct in Britain. In Scotland, the trees are being cleared, but are converting to moorland. And in the far damp north-west the peat bogs are slowly spreading."
http://www.these-islands.co.uk/publications/i280/the_word_from_the_woods.aspx
Posted 6 years ago # -
A History of the Native Woodlands of Scotland 1500-1920, T.C. Smout and Alan R. Macdonald, Edinburgh University Press, 2004 is a good primer on the forest history of the northern part of 'these islands' written by academic foresters. There's a copy in the NLS and it's on Google books.
Not quite as dreamy as that stuff right enough. Notions like the 'Great Caledonian Forest' are total bunkum.
Posted 6 years ago # -
16th century kestrel nicknames [warning: contain rule 2]
(whole thread of old/obscure bird words here -
@jdanielp: "Anything described as HALCYONINE resembles a kingfisher")
Posted 6 years ago # -
Buzzard hovering near Danderhall; had a great view of it from the new cycle path.
A few hundred metres away, some homo sapiens doing their noble duty by systematically removing non-native species of bird from the Drum estate.
Posted 6 years ago # -
100m or so of watching a kingfisher fly towards, then right passed me and away at Faskally Forest nr river Tummel.
@ Unhurt & jdanielp who do I speak to to get my badge ?
Posted 6 years ago # -
I can provide. But the rule is you have to wear it at the next PY / beer excursion.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I'll wear it, but will iwrats be OK with that ?
Posted 6 years ago # -
It's OK. We'll give him a consolation badge. And our pity.
Posted 6 years ago # -
will iwrats be OK with that ?
I'll take resigned acceptance right on up to Nobel Prize level, don't you worry.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@IainMcR @unhurt sounds positively halcyonic!
Posted 6 years ago # -
Common starfish with, uncommonly, only four legs. At Gullane.
. by IWRATS IWRATS, on Flickr
Posted 6 years ago # -
Yeah and why are the park runners in porty not attending the lavvy in their own homes before going down the park?
Posted 6 years ago # -
While commuting on the canal towpath this week, I spotted no herons on Monday morning, one heron yesterday morning and two herons this morning. How many will I spot tomorrow? Place your bets now!
Posted 6 years ago # -
I am a self-confessed accipiterphile and prize above all else sight of bird hawks in hunting mode. You can see sparrowhawks prospecting around Edinburgh all the time once your eye is in, but hunting flight is fast, low and often weaving through cover.
This morning the misty air was so calm that I actually heard the whoosh as the female emerged from scrub, banked hard when she spotted me, and flew straight through a holly bush at about 40mph.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@jdanielp - what a group of herons called?
There is one in Dalgety Bay just at the end of my commute i see sometimes....and then another pair a few "bays" round that i usually see on run/walk around the coastal path - they are very spectacular with there huge wing span...
...for some reason i always imagine them to the be the "Gentlemen with Money" of the bird species...Posted 6 years ago # -
@rider73 apparently it is 'siege'. Now I'm slightly concerned.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Things I discovered in the pub tonight; If you say 'road kill' with a cod Russian accent you are saying 'sparrowhawk' in Estonian.
@unhurt
Take note.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Noted. I'm sure this information will one day prove invaluable...
Posted 6 years ago # -
I spotted a single heron from the canal towpath this morning.
Nobody wins, primarily due to the complete lack of participation.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Nobody wins, primarily due to the complete lack of participation.
#accidentalautobiography?
Posted 6 years ago # -
#notentirelysurehowtorespondtothathashtagsuggestion
Posted 6 years ago # -
Just liked the 'story in a sentence' completeness of the formulation.
I did wonder if a Fibonacci sequence of herons was possible but that would quickly get out of hand.
Posted 6 years ago # -
#fairenough
Posted 6 years ago # -
Not a local highlight, but I love this photograph of a crowd of ravens - taken outside Iqaluit. (Tried to apply for a job based there a couple of years ago, but needed Canadian residency. Pah!)
Posted 6 years ago #
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