Pleased to see there are still nine cygnets.
It made up for the copious quantities of manure on the towpath this evening.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Leisure
Wildlife highlight of the day
(7223 posts)-
Posted 5 years ago #
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Just watched the Movie Neither Wolf Nor Dog at the Balerno Village Screen. Set on a South Dakota reservation. Ends up at wounded knee Cemetery. On at the Dominion on Tuesday. Long and slow but ultimately rather good.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Four goldfinches were my vanguard this morning on the Whang out at the thieves road carpark. Flying from fence post to fence ahead of me tres Jolie until a car drove along and scared them off
Posted 5 years ago # -
Osprey fishing off Crinan, cuckoo calling at Dunadd, usual waders etc, thrush murdering snails on an anvil, but Seafari trip cancelled due to weather so no seals at all so far woe etc. Possible peregrine at Ellenabeich (now apparently just calling itself Easedale).
Posted 5 years ago # -
Strange name for a bird.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Four pure white pigeons on the Drum estate. I would have simply called them "doves", but then wondered what exactly the difference between a dove and a pigeon is, and turns out it's complicated.
Posted 5 years ago # -
In English I'd say the distinction is edibility. Pigeon for dinner doves for show.
Of course we're both capable of thinking of pigeons as doos so that complicates matters.
Posted 5 years ago # -
My pal bought a doocot
a lovely wooden house for
four beautiful white birds
three of them were none too fussy
in their choice of partners
the other more standoffish
Now the area up the bing at Broxburn
has doos with bits of white
and doves with smudge of pigeonPosted 5 years ago # -
A smidgeon of pidgeon
Posted 5 years ago # -
@daisydAISY, I like it
Posted 5 years ago # -
The Heriot-Watt Cygnets do not appear to have made it and the parents are back into a mating cycle now while one of last year's brood is still hanging around. Hopefully this will not end up being a double-tragedy with late-hatching cygnets not having grown large enough to survive winter...
Posted 5 years ago # -
Was out running be errands with one of the kids this evening and spotted one of the Figgy Park otters playing in the pond weed as we were coming home.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Nice!
Black cap in Ardmaddy Castle Gardens this evening.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Kittiwakes! Loads of them, fishing in the Corryvreckan.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Three swifts screaming over Haymarket Terrace this morning :)
(Oops, should this have been in this thread?)
Posted 5 years ago # -
spent ten minutes yesterday trying to take a photo of swan and cygnet preening on shore while other parent was in water. cygnet was not very coordinated--really cute!
all pictures crap.
today, they were right next to the bike path! so i took one clear photo and then just enjoyed watching the parents with their little grey fluffball.
(there are also a few families of ducklings on the WoL just upstream from Shore Place, lots of cuteness.)we are the most-favoured siesta space for our fox, so i'm guessing we'll never get hedgehogs... :(
Posted 5 years ago # -
We have a hedgehog despite our dogs regularly being in the garden, so there must be some hope.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Another freaky fact about pigeons is they kind of produce milk. Not lactation as such but some sort of secretion in their thrapple they feed the young squabs with known as Crop Milk (I read that in the link above and found it noteworthy)
Posted 5 years ago # -
A swan family with at least five fairly small cygnets has appeared on the canal around Hermiston House in the last couple of days. There has also been another pair of adult swans without cygnets in between this family and the nine cygnet family lately, usually between Kingsknowe and the Bridge 8 Hub. There's definitely some scope for conflict as the families start to increase their range of travel.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Far off & high up but a definite sea eagle spot yesterday morning.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Last night, a fox walking along the top of the stone wall that separates our front garden from some rough grassland.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Cuckoos can be heard on the mean streets of central balerno!
Posted 5 years ago # -
Otter doing its thing in the Water of Leith this afternoon, in the pool above the weir just upstream of Spylaw Park. Spotted it from the bridge off West Mill Road, and pointed it out to two folks coming the other way who seemed grateful. We all agreed that none of us had seen one on the WoL before.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Will go looking for that otter
Posted 5 years ago # -
I don't know how regular otters are in their habits, but it was at about 5:30pm if that helps?
(Am I bad person for feeling that a calm and quietly appreciative sighting shared with a couple of passers-by was so much nicer than the rather overblown and breathy piece about the Figgate Park otter in one of the Springwatches last week? Probably.)
Posted 5 years ago # -
Was on a spot from which I could see (with a high-end telescope) into the nests of both an osprey and a white-tailed eagle.
Two chicks about to fledge on a peregrine nest elsewhere and also a goldfinch defiantly sitting on its nest in the bush I was pruning until I spotted it.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Our figgate otters were featured on Springwatch last week (not that we knew about it till after the fact, but the filmmaker wasn't happy with the final edit, and is producing the film he wanted it to be and sending it to us (the Friends group that urchaidh is in as well) hopefully to put on social media).
Last two weeks spent in Polbain, near Achiltibuie, and Riof on Lewis, and while the wildlife was relatively quiet there were some notable highlights. Red-necked Phalarope the rarest - we're at the very southern edge of their breeding territory, only about 22 breeding males (the RSPB is very specific...) in the UK - all in Lewis or Orkney I believe.
First photo of a Grasshopper Warbler (sometimes get them at Aberlady, and I've heard them at Pease Bay); as well as of a group of 6 Black-throated Divers just offshore at Riof Beach, and a lovely ~Red-throated Diver a little further out. Gloriously overhead lazy flyby of a White-tailed Eagle, and for a couple of minutes on a morning run a Golden Eagle got mobbed off a perch by a Buzzard, and flew alongside me. Lots of Cuckoos, though not as many as recent years it seemed. And the first place we stayed in had all sorts of nooks and crannies for nesting birds and bats, with a Pied Wagtail family squatting in an old Swallow nest, with four chicks being fed roughly every four minutes (I set up a camera). Oh, and just as we realised a Ringed Plover was doing it's "I'm injured, look at my broken wing, come and chase me" thing that indicated we were close to a nest and we should take a wide berth, a Ringed Plover Chick 3 yards or so in front.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Multiple skylarks in the fields above our house at the weekend. Spotted a few 20-30 yards ahead on the tarmacked track, which made it easy to pick them out in the binoculars. I managed to follow one up using the binoculars but as soon as I tried to spot the same bird with the naked eye, I lost it.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I SAW THE KINGFISHER. It was flying along the canal by the bridge to the Water of Leith path this evening.
That's made my year, let alone my day.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Deep joy.
Posted 5 years ago #
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