@ejstubbs, fair comment I am more Mork than Minky
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Leisure
Wildlife highlight of the day
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Posted 4 years ago #
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Went Veloviewer Tiling yesterday morning out by Bridge of Earn, doing a short trip up the Earn valley on one side and down on the other. Very pleased to have half a dozen sightings of red squirrels at various points along the route.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Two big formations of geese flying south over East Lothian. Spotted and heard from twin recliner near Fenton as we headed back from a loop round Haddington and North Berwick.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Coal tits on the bird feeder. Very engaging.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Cycled down to the mouth of the Esk with my new binoculars which are lovely.
Shoveler duck, greater crested grebe and jackdaws doing kleptoparasitism on common terns. Also female pintails I think.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Big heron at Edgelaw reservoir. I was just fixin' to take a photograph and it took off like a ruddy great bomber and flew to the far end of the water.
Posted 4 years ago # -
I downloaded an app called 'Seek' by iNaturalist that can identify living things caught on camera. I used it for the first time today and identified a buff-tip caterpillar and a shaggy mane fungus.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@jdanielp
That is some computing power. Impressive.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@IWRATS presumably all via the cloud. Just spotted a fairly sizable badger wandering along the pavement outside my brother's house. Didn't manage to take a photograph though so I won't be earning any badges.
Posted 4 years ago # -
No badger badges for JDan P was a late era Fall song I recollect
Posted 4 years ago # -
@gembo classic. I have just leveled up by achieving three identifications using the app - my brother owns a 'domestic cat'...
Posted 4 years ago # -
(Yesterday)
2 red squirrels chasing
Birnam
(First I’ve ever seen!)
Posted 4 years ago # -
@chdot - oh cool. I've seen them now and then and it gives me a thrill. To think they were as once as common as the greys.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Always a shock to see squirrels in France and realise they're reds (though often dark brown there).
The grey-red boundary is pretty sharp here and corresponds with the range of pine martins. More pine martins please.
Posted 4 years ago # -
I downloaded an app called 'Seek' by iNaturalist that can identify living things caught on camera. I used it for the first time today and identified a buff-tip caterpillar and a shaggy mane fungus.
I worked on a project in 2010 that was seeking to do something quite a bit more simple but related to this.
At the time the Machine learning/AI experts I worked with suggested that at the time we could create an app which knew if you uploaded a photo if it was taken outside, and likely if that photo had a bird in it. But we were a decade away from an app that could identify the type of bird.
So they weren't far wrong really!
Posted 4 years ago # -
Geese over the Pentlands flying in a V formation for a bombing raid somewhere.
On the home front, by Flotterstone, a rookery of rooks.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Sea eagles!! Two. One close enough to see yellow feet through binos, then both up, up, up, UP but still absolutely ridiculously MASSIVE. All with a backdrop of perfect blue September sky & the N end of Jura.
The stag framing himself against the sky between two rocks like a VisitScotland set-up just couldn't compete.
Posted 4 years ago # -
On todays shoreline walk from Gullane Bents to Gullane Point:
Kingfisher - unmistakable flash of electric blue flying low and straight along the strand line (literature suggests likely one of this year's that's been kicked off the family territory);
Peregrine - disturbed a flock of ~50 oystercatchers that were resting on the rocks at the tip of the point, again might have been a young 'un (looked a bit too brown for a full adult);
Several small rafts of auks - some puffin, some razorbill, mostly immatures I think rather than adults in winter plumage. (Conventional wisdom is that they should all be out at sea by now but the RSPB's distribution map does indicate puffins as being found in the Firth of Forth in winter, and razorbills as offshore residents in the Firth year round.)Plus the usual eider, gulls, cormorants etc etc.
Oh, and it was a beautiful blue sky day:)
Posted 4 years ago # -
Still one swallow down near Peebles yesterday.
A lot of fancy vans parked on the golf course road at inners. As the protege remarked - very middle class sport this mountain biking.
This is not to say road cycling isn’t with all the stealth bikes and carbon etc just that to get yourself to Glentress or the Leithen Valley you need a vehicle and yesterday they were all fancy Volkswagen vans.
Wildlife of millennial ago spotted in combustible form as the Cottage called Glentress which is actually in the Leithen Valley had the coal fire on yesterday morning.
Oh and I might have mentioned elsewhere 3 old mamils took 12 mins off their PB on the innerleithen descent. Just shows what a north wind can do, we would have been slightl6Y faster but chose to wait for the protege a couple of times.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@gembo: Still one swallow down near Peebles yesterday.
Interesting. I thought I saw one at Gullane today but it was a very brief sighting and I convinced myself that I must have imagined the bird's hirundity.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@ ejstubbs I know what you mean as was trying to say the warbler or whatever it was weaving in and out of the walkers atop blackford hill today was of the hirondelle variety but no.
Yesterday most definitely. So some stragglers late this year. Not sure what their chances are. Maybe they know a secret location in the south coast that remains teeming with bugs over winter. There is a Jurassic land that time forgot section of collapsed cliff near baranscombe in Devon where the jungles has reclaimed the area that might support an overwintering swallow
The geese are incoming phantoms in the landscape too
Posted 4 years ago # -
After the murder of a crow in my front garden, a sparrow hawk was on the defensive hiding and protecting its catch under a tree from an angry swooping murder of crows
Posted 4 years ago # -
Did the hawk kill the crow? Big ask for anything bigger than a jackdaw.
Posted 4 years ago # -
I'm not actually sure if it was a crow - if it was then it was a young one as whatever was underneath the hawk was quite small. Couldn't see clearly. But the crows were not happy.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@cocshepherd: Quite possibly just fancied a bit of the kill for themselves, rather than seeking any kind of 'revenge' (best to resist the temptation to anthropomorphise - even relating to crows which do appear quite personable in many ways).
@gembo: The geese are incoming phantoms in the landscape too
Which reminds me that on the way out of Gullane heading towards Aberlady yesterday we saw an almighty multi-stranded skein of geese passing over the Hopetoun Monument. Must have been quite a sight (and sound) from nearer at hand.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Disturbed two herons in the spillway between Thriepmuir and Harlaw this morning. Not an ideal spot for a Heronry.
Many bugs out for any straggling swallows
Big V of honking geese
Very very noisy grouse
Up west Kip top moor so peaceful, Forth fog bound
Great start to day
Posted 4 years ago # -
Tarka the Pigeon Killer
Posted 4 years ago # -
Hedgehog, crossing the road.
Apologies to everyone between Kelso and Perth, who were presumably woken up by the racket my dog made.
Posted 4 years ago #
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