The kingfisher was on the Lancaster Canal down in Coronashire where I was socially distantly visiting my parents for the first time since before lockdwown.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Leisure
Wildlife highlight of the day
(7223 posts)-
Posted 4 years ago #
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Is it the same bird? Does it just follow you around?
Posted 4 years ago # -
I have seen more than one at the same time on at least one occasion so this seems unlikely but I wouldn't rule out the possibility that there is a UK-wide network of them working together.
Posted 4 years ago # -
You are the kingfisher king
Posted 4 years ago # -
The Dunsapie Otter is still easy to spot.
Posted 4 years ago # -
High for the otter, low for the dunsapie toads., other pond life, fish etc
Posted 4 years ago # -
Baby hedgehog in the dusk last night on a walk.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Will take my new binoculars to Dunsapie, otter-spotting.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Man that otter is not shy. Guzzling Lord knows what like a mad thing. Quite the Lady of the loch.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@IWRATS indeed. I briefly thought I wasn't going to see it last night but then it emerged and did its thing (although it was staying closer to the far shore than it had done on the two previous times I had seen it for whatever reason).
Posted 4 years ago # -
@IWRATS can one reliably sex otters from a distance?
Posted 4 years ago # -
I can't, but if I don't know then I alternate between he and she for balance. It looked small so not an adult dog otter but could be a youth?
Posted 4 years ago # -
@IWRATS that is what I was assuming given how much it is eating while staying very svelte. Google tends to suggest that we should be trying to observe in which direction it urinates in order to determine its gender from a distance.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Yikes. Mae otters pee left, female right? Surely they just pee in the water?
I think she's a young'un for sure.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@IWRATS it's more whether it projects forwards or backwards...
Posted 4 years ago # -
Accidentally pursued an unimpressed badger down the WoL at Currie in the wet late Wednesday night. Also millions of bats swooping about my head the whole way between Balerno and Slateford.
Posted 4 years ago # -
I'm sitting on the back step watching a greater spotted woodpecker in the ash tree. Tok tok tok.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Unusual to have one in the garden. We spotted one in flight, a kind of choppy, staccato movement out by Pettinain yesterday, also dead otter near the Burns monument Covington. For the other thread.
Llamas below Braehead as ever.
Posted 4 years ago # -
My parents have a pair in their garden. Admittedly their garden is itself fairly unusual.
Posted 4 years ago # -
It's been a while, but here's my latest James Bond theme tune with wildlife lyrics.
To be sung to the The World Is Not Enough theme tune:
It knows how to hunt
It knows how to steal
It knows when to show
And when to conceal
It knows when to dive
And it knows when to munch
Otters never die, from eating too muchThe loch's an otter trough
And it is such a perfect place with fish to scoff
And if it's strong enough
Eventually it will eat all of the tasty stuffCreatures like it
Know how to survive
There's no point in living
If it can't feel alive
It knows when to chill
And it knows when to kill
If it can't have it all
Then nothing willThe loch's an otter trough
And it is such a perfect place with fish to scoff
And if it's strong enough
Eventually it will eat all of the tasty stuffIt feels safe
Despite the stares
It feels ready
The fish unpreparedThe loch's an otter trough
And it is such a perfect place with fish to scoff
And if it's strong enough
Eventually it will eat all of the tasty stuffThe loch's an otter trough
The loch's an otter trough
There's nowhere near enough
The loch's an otter troughJames Bond theme tunes with wildlife lyrics may return
Posted 4 years ago # -
Now there's an otter in the Braid Burn. They're everywhere! https://twitter.com/Andy_the_Piper/status/1302709387144966149
Posted 4 years ago # -
Went for a mid/late evening exploration of some wooded paths south of Roslin Glen. I failed to find said paths so I improvised a route.
I was cheered immensely by listening to the owls tu-whit, tu-whooing to each other in the darkness by Whitehill. At Lasswade I very nearly rode over a toad who was generally minding his own business, but managed to jink out of the way in time. Later I stopped at the Bilston viaduct to watch bats taking advantage of innumerable insects being drawn to the really-a-bit-too-bright LED lights.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Large numbers of geese on my Midlothian pseudo commute today. Too large for residents or too early for immigrants?
Posted 4 years ago # -
Massive buzzard on the whang this morning pretending to be a red kite again
Dead deer, dead badger and dead mink in the lowlight tally - we went round pentlands and got soaked on west linton moor road. Amazing bake well tart at the Red Barn. Stonking headwind on the Whang.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Went for a slow evening pootle around Penicuik and Rosslynlee yesterday since the wind had died down. Saw a rabbit pottering about on the railway path near Auchendinny, and was delighted to meet a badger and lots of bats up at Firth Mains.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Swallow stll feeding youngsters in nest
Posted 4 years ago # -
@gembo: Not sure I'd include a dead mink in the lowlights. It's an invasive species for the introduction of which Homo sapiens is entirely responsible, and it predates at-risk native aquatic animals such as water voles.
Posted 4 years ago # -
No mink is an island entire of itself; every mink
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any mink's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in minkind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
Père Gembeau posts; he posts for thee.Posted 4 years ago #
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