Good reminder @acsimpson - Kingsknowe has gone Crocus Crazee
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Leisure
Wildlife highlight of the day
(7223 posts)-
Posted 4 years ago #
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A common tern over the Kirkgate flats yesterday? This is very early for such a bird. Maybe I was affected by the ganja miasma?
Posted 4 years ago # -
Some sort of a bird of prey looking rather majestic on Gogar Bank in lovely morning light. First flying on my right, then over the road and then on my left. Looked very stoic compared to my nervous cycling on frosty roads.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Mummy and daddy swan preliminary nest building activities out at the Wester Hailes lagoon
Posted 4 years ago # -
One was hovering over the soon to be houses around West Craigs earlier too. Perhaps it's the same one.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Took the bus to work on account of my impending demise from coronavirus and was delighted to watch two pied wagtails courting on the gutter of Gayfield Place tenement block. They seem to be city-curious as a species.
Posted 4 years ago # -
The Wester Hailes Swans appear to have experienced a minor disagreement given that I spotted them sleeping separately this morning, one in the approximate location of the nest by the Wester Hailes Lagoon, the other on the grassy strip between the towpath and the water on the opposite side.
Posted 4 years ago # -
I spotted The Kingsknowe Rat lying dead on cat ice at Hailes Quarry Park on my ride home from the picket line yesterday afternoon. That ice had gone this morning so it is either now sleeping with the fishes or was maybe picked off the ice by an opportunistic predator before it melted.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Spotted a pied wagtail on George Street the other day. It ran under a white van and then seemed to hop up on to the rear axle/suspension! I'm not sure that van surfing is likely to be very healthy for wee birdies (though I have seen footage of wagtails happily roosting on moving spraybars at water treatment works).
Posted 4 years ago # -
The Kingsknowe rat is dead? Long live the Kingsknowe rat!
Posted 4 years ago # -
My house mice may or may not have moved out, but a very cute specimen with enormous ears and glossy fur has been making free with the sunflower seeds I put out for the birds this morning.
Posted 4 years ago # -
ah, you were missing your mice so put out some food to entice them back, nice
Posted 4 years ago # -
Otter swimming from Polwarth towards Harrison Park for any towpath commuters. canal very still, so easy to spot.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Frontcrawl?
Posted 4 years ago # -
Skylarks singing East Lothian
Posted 4 years ago # -
Kingfisher flew across the river in Dumfries and perched right by me on the cycle path, before being scared off by my stopping to admire it, and flying away catching the sunlight. Lovely to get a really good close look at one
Posted 4 years ago # -
Photographer with giant lens camera scrambling up embankment below park road above Innocent. Had spotted a Peregrine at Samson's Ribs. His bike parked at railings. Chatted and said he just had to get the shot.
Not wildlife but rare...
Earlier we were walking through below Craigmillar Castle and met two lads being followed by a white cat with a harness for lead. Moved along 30 feet behind - from a distance it looked like a dog.Posted 4 years ago # -
Coming back over the A702 just into Lanarkshire and oh was that the Southern Uplands golden eagle pair? Maybe. Mibbe naw. Nae bins, eh?
Posted 4 years ago # -
Redwings hanging out among purple & white crocuses on the S side of the Meadows.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@LaidBack
It would be fantastic if Edinburgh acquired more peregrines. There seem to be tonnes of nesting spots and prey but only sparse presence unlike in Glasgow and Newcastle.
Last time I saw one in town it was attacking the fake peregrine on Jenner's Depository.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Got a bit up-close and personal with some talons this morning coming down the hill towards Crammond Brig. I think it was a buzzard. It was sitting (?) in the bushes at the side of the bike path but I disturbed it, it took flight and came within a couple of feet of my head. Would not like to be a small mammal on the end of those feet.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Buzzards are doing very well in town. Our local pair is on Craigmillar Hill and they're making gimlet eyes at each other in preparation for another breeding season.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Think rabbits about as big as buzzards can manage, mostly voles but not fussed will eat other birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects and worms.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@IWRATS: I wasn't aware that there was a Southern Uplands Golden Eagle pair. Had I been so aware, I might have taken more than the cursory look that I did at the five assumed-to-be-buzzards (one pair/twosome and a group of three) that we saw soaring over the Moorfoots on our way back from Melrose last week after visiting a sick friend in the rather wonderful Margaret Kerr Unit of the Borders General.
We generally work on the principle that it's a buzzard unless you get a sufficiently good look at it to confirm otherwise (they're not called "the tourist's eagle" for nothing). As it happened I did have my glasses in the car, but didn't think it worth stopping - plus it's not easy to find a safe place to do so on that road anyway.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@ejstubbs
Yes, one breeding pair of long standing and a handful of errant juveniles it seems. I'd always assumed the breeding pair were in the Merrick massif somewhere but the tale of Fred the Balerno eagle got me wondering.
Posted 4 years ago # -
A number of years ago I saw a pair of Eagles on the ground in the west Pentlands, well west of West Linton away from any of the commonly used paths, they were are as shocked to see me as I was to see them.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@steveo
The recent invention of reliable lightweight satellite tags has showed all the old ideas to be in need of updating. The youngsters get all over the place and regularly cross the Central Belt for a poke about in the Southern Uplands.
Birds get seen most in the intersection of where they are and where birdwatchers expect them to be.
Posted 4 years ago # -
A blackbird singing its little heart out outside our window this morning.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@iwrats: Is this information published somewhere, or does one have to be involved in the projects to have access to it?
(I have to admit that I'm very bad at reading the periodicals that the RSPB et al send me on a rather too-regular basis. It would probably help if they weren't so wedded to hardcopy. The days when a gentleman's library included decades-worth of bound copies of society journals are somewhat behind us, I fear.)
Posted 4 years ago # -
@ejstubbs
I've had sight of the odd historical track through contacts but obviously nobody gets near the live data. I'd imagine they'll publish research results soon but of course academic journals are usually paywalled and nobody will be publishing nest or roosting sites which would be all too obvious from full data sets....
Posted 4 years ago #
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