CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
@IWRATS: Hmm, not sure it would have reached 70-100mm wingspan. I'd say it was only about an inch long. That said, I did think that it looked as if it had only emerged and the wings still had to fully expand.
Anyway, it was 'poplar' with me... (sorry)
Swarms of swifts in Baku, including around the Maiden Tower - where there was also a bright kestrel swooping in and clinging to the stonework. (Excellent Baku swift nesting relocation information can be found here: https://t.co/FxTnq1ZUAb)
And then - something else, yellowy-green and bright in the sun but somehow not parakeet shaped (and anyway they don't, according to Collins, seem to be feral here?) - and I THINK it might have been a juvenile golden oriole?
Oh, also lots of lovely urban hoodie crows, but as I recall from Mongolia many years ago, the grey seems paler than at home, almost a buff type colour.
something else, yellowy-green and bright in the sun
Orioles are very shy. This maybe?
It was very yellow-green, but didn't seem to fit with the blue-cheeked bee-eater in my bird app... Hmm!
I've never seen the blue on a bee-eater in the field. They look yellow-green to me. But I have no idea what could be lurking in Baku's trees.
Couple of hares on the roads near Gladhouse. First one was so big, and partially hidden in long grass, that I thought it was a fox for a start.
Then two different families of whatever these are:
Not the best photo, but hopefully you can make out its crest.
Lapwing surely, despite blur.
Lapwing deffo
The light was right for looking into the canal this afternoon. I observed fish (mostly stripey) of various sizes from tiny to merely somewhat small by Boroughmuir Plaza. There was also a bike, various traffic cones and other random detritus, and a disappointing sheen of fuel and/oil on the surface.
That seems to be right. Non-blurry photos here: https://www.norfolkwildlifetrust.org.uk/wildlife-in-norfolk/species-explorer/birds/lapwing
Cycling through the RIE, I suddenly realised that the leaf blowing across the road in front of me was actually a small rodent or shrew (I just learned that shrews are not rodents). Narrowly managed to avoid running it over, and it headed towards the hospital.
Possibly not coincidentally, I then got a good view of a kestrel hunting nearby.
There's a particularly lazy Kestrel uses the streetlights along the Balgreen tram path to hunt from. There's a pair lives somewhere in the vicinity. Always at their most visible on the days I don't have the camera with me on the bike (like this morning).
If you ever get a shot of a raptor with a leg ring there's a group can give you its history - it's fascinating to find out!
Double Post Deletion!
A possible merlin seen on the Argyll Alps audax on Saturday. Also black guillemots.
Plus a glorious field densely packed with foxgloves. Probably unintentional - do they still make the heart drug with foxgloves?
massive field of lupins at abandoned place Ravenstruther off the A70 beyond Carstairs.
I thought they were wild seedings but another of the peloton insisted they must have been planted???
Lupins are grown as a crop
Lupins are grown as a crop - they produce very superior protein according to Soya UK and will help to reduce soya imports
Bee orchid near Dunglas, East Lothian, last week.
Wow! That's fab!
I spotted the swan family from the Ratho direction on the canal near Gogar Station Road Bridge and managed to count five medium-sized cygnets this morning. The family was in pursuit of a lone adult swan, which I spotted just before and had been bemused as to why is was swimming so quickly.
Baby moorhens on Inverleith Pond. Cute.
Could also go in the domesticated animals thread?
Lovely buzzard flying across us on west Linton moor road, another on telephone wire with very yellow legs.
A complete clanjamfry of maybe field fare around a sheep pen in the granites and I mean 100s and 100s of them. Too brown for stuckies.
Big fat female sparrowhawk in questing flight through the azure sky over Alnwickhill. Seemed to be showing herself off in the sunshine.
Buzzard sized bird hovering over a field like a kestrel. Turned out to be a bird scarer.
What I think was a thrush hammering a nut against a large stone to try and break it open.
@frenchy, a nut? Not a snail?
Quite possibly a snail, yes. Common behaviour?
Song thrushes well known to hammer snails on an 'anvil'. Lovely bird. Big eyes, brown-spotted golden breast.
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