CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Leisure

Wildlife highlight of the day

(7221 posts)

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  1. Rosie
    Member

    Hares:-

    "For Celts, the hare was taboo. You could not kill or eat it, except for the annual hare hunt at the Beltane festival. A female saint, St. Melangell, was always accompanied by a hare: hares were sometimes called hares have been styled St. Monacella’s Lambs, and were under her protection. In Co. Kerry it used to be said that eating a hare was eating your grandmother; and the penalty for killing a hare was to be struck with cowardice.

    Anglo-Saxons also venerated the hare – but, again, ritual hare hunts were a feature of the spring festival, to the goddess Eostre.

    https://www.ruthpadel.com/article/hare-hunted-hare-tamed-hare-now/

    Posted 4 years ago #

  2. chdot
    Admin

    Posted 4 years ago #

  3. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    I ate a hare I found last summer. Never eaten a tadpole. Knowingly.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  4. gembo
    Member

    Jug it?

    Posted 4 years ago #

  5. amir
    Member

    Cuckoo between Innerleithen and Piper's rest

    Posted 4 years ago #

  6. Frenchy
    Member

    This afternoon I was sitting in the garden discussing how I relatively recently learned to differentiate sparrowhawks from kestrels and buzzards, when a swift flew overhead to remind me that I even more recently learned to differentiate them from swallows.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  7. gembo
    Member

    Every day is a school day

    Oh wait

    Every seventh day is a school day

    Posted 4 years ago #

  8. minus six
    Member

    the sand martins were ace tonight

    Posted 4 years ago #

  9. fimm
    Member

    A whole load of small grouse (grouses? grice? ;-) ) flying up out of the heather near East Cairn Hill. Clearly immature but big enough to fly. Most of them went one way, one went off in the opposite direction and two stayed put to start with and then popped up noisily when they decided I really wasn't going away.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  10. ejstubbs
    Member

    Do grouse reared/'managed' for shooting count as "wildlife"? Discuss...

    Posted 4 years ago #

  11. gembo
    Member

    Born, live a few months, shot put in mass grave. Not much of a life

    Posted 4 years ago #

  12. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    Grouse are still wild. They don't tolerate pens, unlike the pheasants and partridges that go cage-wood-bang-pit.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  13. ejstubbs
    Member

    @IWRATS: pheasants and partridges ... go cage-wood-bang-pit

    Don't people at least have the decency to eat these critters once they've been slaughtered?

    (Full disclosure: I have in the past been served, and eaten, grouse. And we did have a brace of pheasant one Christmas day, instead of turkey. They were perfectly good to eat, and they're hardly alone in having question marks over the ethics of how they get on to your plate.)

    Posted 4 years ago #

  14. Frenchy
    Member

    I would guess that a lot of folk shooting pheasants do take one home to eat. But they'll have shot 20 others in the same day.

    Something like 10 million pheasants are raised in Scotland every year*. Whilst not all of those will be shot to death, the number that are cooked and eaten will be at least two orders of magnitude lower than whatever that number is.

    *Estimated from the UK and England figures here: https://whoownsengland.org/2019/04/02/the-english-shooting-estates-that-rear-20-million-pheasants-a-year/

    Posted 4 years ago #

  15. Frenchy
    Member

    Today was the day I discovered that squirrels aren't silent.

    Best guess from this video is that the squirrel I saw was making either the "Predator imminent" or "I want to mate" noises. I was walking the dogs at the time, so a predator warning would make sense. Ironically, the dogs only noticed the squirrel because it was shouting at them, but since it was sat on top of a house, it was quite safe. Maybe it was even shouting "TRY AND GET ME UP HERE YE DAFT MUTTS" rather than "LOOK OUT, THERE'S DOGS HERE."

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    Posted 4 years ago #

  16. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    @Frenchy

    We have been treated to a magpie begging for food as a squirrel shouts at it for four straight days now.

    I would quite happily shoot both dead.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  17. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    Don't people at least have the decency to eat these critters once they've been slaughtered?

    Exact figures are not available but it appears that 40,000,000 pheasants are released in Great Britain each year. By mass that makes them the biggest single vertebrate component in the ecosystem. About 10,000,000 partridges are also released.

    Where the meat ends up is undocumented but here are a few things I've seen;

    1) Roads carpeted in flattened pheasants.
    2) A litter bin in a lay-by on the A9 full of putrid grouse.
    3) A hole in the ground full of putrid pheasants.
    4) A vehicle with nicely dressed partridges on stainless steel trays heading to the restaurant trade.
    5) Pheasant in Sainsburys (which I sometimes buy).

    The legal framework allowing gamebirds into the food chain is not entirely clear. They contain lead (obviously) but also flubendazole which they need to live at the mad densities that commercial shoots require.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  18. gembo
    Member

    Long legged fox or maybe wee deer in bushes then wee hare or big rabbit out at murder farm

    Posted 4 years ago #

  19. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    The remaining (un-decapitated) cub from our fox litter has been carrying its rear nearside leg for two weeks now.

    Seems to be getting food all the same.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  20. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    Magpie just chased a fledgling into the house through open French window. It went straight under the sofa. Robin I think.

    Madame coaxed it back out again, doesn't even seem to have pooped.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  21. amir
    Member

    A possible grasshopper warbler in East Lothian. Weird sound whatever it was.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  22. gembo
    Member

    5 pairs on Arthur’s seat?

    My pal sandy in Gullane Recorded one

    I heard one on the whang

    Like a pea rattling in a can (just joking EJStubbs)

    Robin chick still in nappies?

    Posted 4 years ago #

  23. chdot
    Admin

    “

    38 Common Grasshopper Warbler 1 21 Jun 2020 Nolan Hayden

    “

    https://ebird.org/subnational2/GB-SCT-ELN?yr=all&m=&rank=mrec

    Posted 4 years ago #

  24. crowriver
    Member

    A wee toadlet clambering through my strawberries down at the allotment this afternoon.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  25. jdanielp
    Member

    Swifts and an owl hunting on Arthur's Seat.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  26. jdanielp
    Member

    Also some slugs.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  27. jdanielp
    Member

    And now bats.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  28. Arellcat
    Moderator

    I haven't been out today, but yesterday I pootled around Shewington farm and saw two Red Admirals, a small Tortoiseshell and a Speckled Wood butterfly, and then up at Ladies Walk Plantation I watched a deer that didn't know whether to run away from the Big Scary Tractor that was crop-spraying or to run away from the Big Scary Lady that was offroading.

    Scientists may be concerned about the global depletion of the insect population, but I am fairly confident that they have merely all moved, and are now concentrated about a mile east of Rosslynlee hospital.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  29. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    Garden suddenly infested with about twenty fledgling long-tailed tits. Very charming.

    Posted 4 years ago #

  30. Arellcat
    Moderator

    I am very happy to put this in the highlight thread and not the lowlight.

    I was riding home in the gloom along the A703 moor road earlier, since I'd spotted a chink of blue sky in between thunder clouds ("Sensacio! Nimbo cumulos a Manto Blanco!" etc.), and I spotted a deer rooting around nervously on the verge-cum-footway about 200 yards up the road. I thought it'll either dash into the field, or it'll dash across the road in front of me. And I was watching three cars coming up behind me, not screaming along but doing 40 or 50. So I figured if they try to overtake on the double white lines near the blind bend they might hit the deer. I was worried for the deer, not for the imminent state of the lead car.

    So I swung wide and took the whole damn road, and made that 'slow the [rule 2] down!' gesture. It took a bit of wild, slightly frantic, thorough gesturing but it worked and the driver tucked in behind me.

    And what do you know, but the deer dashed across the road not 20 yards in front of me, and disappeared into the hedge.

    Hazard averted, boy racer boy no.1 caned it past me in his white Ford Focus with the loud exhaust, closely followed by his equally impatient partner in crime in his blue BMW estate. Yeah, cheers for that.

    Posted 4 years ago #

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