I spotted a buzzard which was flying brief sorties between the treeline and the allotment and Millenium Garden area at Heriot-Watt this lunchtime. I also heard a lot of bird activity taking place in the woods west of the Sunken Garden, but I didn't manage to identify much.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Leisure
Wildlife highlight of the day
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Posted 4 years ago #
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Sparrowhawk being mobbed by a solitary crow yesterday afternoon, seen from out kitchen window. Flying past, though: haven't had one actually in the garden for quite a while now.
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Long tailed tits on my feeders!
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A pair of tawney owls departing the fir tree in my parents' neighbours' garden for their night of hunting.
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The Lancaster Canal Kingfisher twice this morning. Currently, traditional garden birds, including blackbirds, robins, and various tits and finches, and less traditional ones, including green parakeets, feeding outside in the garden while a Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols plays on Radio 4.
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Wee mouse scuttling across the evil Melville’s garden in St. Andrews square yesterday evening after some rum in the cafe royale.
My old pal Prof Big Davie Whyte remarked he would never ask me again what bike i was riding (too much info)
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Twa herons, a few ducks and my first ever spot of a kingfisher, in the Deveron this morning.
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Extinct wildlife highlight of the year (yes, it is that cool I'm calling it already):
GIANT SLOTHS* DUG HUGE TUNNELS AND MY MIND IS BOGGLEDAlso, they're called PALEOBURROWS.
“I didn’t know there was such a thing as paleoburrows,” says Frank. “I’m a geologist, a professor, and I’d never even heard of them.”
Me neither, Professor Frank.
"It turned out to be the first paleoburrow discovered in the Amazon, which is notable, but not the coolest part. It also turned out to be one of the largest ever measured, with branching tunnels altogether tallying about 2,000 feet in length. The main shafts – since enlarged by erosion – were originally more than six feet tall and three to five feet wide; an estimated 4,000 metric tons of dirt and rock were dug out of the hillside to create the burrow.
“This wasn’t made by one or two individuals,” says Adamy. “It was made by many, over generations.”"
Generations of burrowing giant sloths**. Be still my heart.
Er, anyway, this is amazing and you should read it.
*or possibly giant extinct armadillos, either way: V COOL.
**or armadillosPosted 4 years ago # -
Four thousand tons!?
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Had the article been published 3 days later I'm not sure it would be believed.
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@unhurt
many thanks for the sloth tunneling info
there is hope for the future
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Sparrowhawk just failing to scrag a blackbird on the Balerno end of the WoL walkway. It stood on the path for a few seconds, sizing us up with a "you're next, mate" look in its eye before deciding we were perhaps just a little too big to take on after all, and disappearing off in to the trees in search of an alternative lunch.
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there is hope for the future
if sloth tunnels are what we need, then sloth tunnels are what we ought to work towards. Frankly, I'm already retreating into a happier mental universe where Edinburgh is mainly populated by megafauna (Pleistocene and otherwise).
The Botanics could only be improved by the addition of some daeodon.
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The cormorant emerged from underwater as I was exiting the west end of Slateford Aqueduct this morning. It dove again almost immediately, quite probably due to my unexpected presence closer to it than it was likely to appreciate.
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A couple of brief, but exciting, red squirrel sightings in Kingussie and Newtonmore area last week. Also a potential golden eagle, although it was obscured enough by the trees that it was hard to be sure that it wasn't a huge buzzard. I failed to spot a mountain hare in its white winter coat.
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Two golden eagles on Sigrid Rausing's Coignafearn estate on Saturday.
Also cheeky ravens, feral goats and a stonechat. And a Northern Eggar caterpillar wandering about on the....eh...4th of January. Is that normal?
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The new super path up west kipo has had hairy caterpillars (at least 2) all xmas and new year
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Otters and Dippers showing from the boardwalk on the Water of Leith beneath The Slateford Aquaduct, and Treecreepers and Nuthatches further upstream - near the old Hornbeam at the closed path sign in Colinton Dell. Lovely to see the Gooseanders gleaming on the canal too.
David Attenburgh reading The Peregrine as a podcast on BBC Sounds is recommended.
Cheers
ColinPosted 4 years ago # -
At New Year I found a perfect fairy circle of goldfinch feathers crowned with the disarticulated beak.
A Sparrowhawk had eaten everything else - bones, toes, skin, guts the lot.
This is a highlight.
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Our vixen, snout low into the wind, heading left to right along the garden wall silhouetted against the dawn.
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@Colin ooh. I hope to see otters in the canal again soon.
First kingfisher spot of the year between the Colinton Dell Bridge and Kingsknowe Railway Bridge this morning, which isn't somewhere I have often seen them and I only spotted it today because it made quite a commotion as it took of from a branch alongside me on the far bank before flying ahead briefly and then alighting on another branch.
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As I was sitting at my desk browsing the web and waiting for the kettle to boil this morning, a movement on the back step caught my eye. A tiny wren was perched there. It didn't hang around long. We don't often see them in our garden for some reason (I suspect the neighbours' cats may be a key reason) so to have one visiting, even if only for a moment, gave a lift to the start of my day.
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Thursday morning, avoiding the mad drivers bailed on my commute route at Currie - so traversing the Pentland View behind GP surgery i chanced upon an entire parliament of crows on the roofs of two housing blocks (upper and lower Houses of Parliament) hundreds of crows. Or maybe they were rooks but i dont think so it was well daphers du maur. Then on towpath at bridge 8 i noticed properly the great murals of kingfishers et cetera on their shipping containers. Then further into town plenty goosander action.
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Snowdrops in garden this morning. Early date.
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Me too
Though
How wild is wild?
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Wild? They were livid?
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Too many ? ?
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Woken up too early in their hibernation
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(Not my garden)
Posted 4 years ago #
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