CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
According to someone on Winterwatch who studies this sort if thing, there are 12 female otters on an eight mile stretch of the WoL. I hereby withdraw my skepticism re WoL otter population size as expressed earlier in this thread.
(Has anyone bumped in to Iolo in his wanderings around Edinburgh?)
Otter in the canal crossing the Scott Russell Aqueduct yesterday late afternoon. I was travelling in the same direction as it so followed slowly and watched it for five minutes or so before it became fed up of being watched and went to hide on the far bank.
A gang of ravens hanging around in Eskbank. Surprising - can it be so? The call is distinct from other cros
The way of the Raven might involve The Justin Lees or The Sun Inn
I stopped to try to find out what a person on a bike ahead of me had stopped to look at in the canal by the sports fields west of Wester Hailes this morning. It turned out to be the otter. They said (the person, not the otter) that they had stopped because someone else was looking at it ahead of them. Unfortunately, I don't think that anyone stopped behind me and spotted it (which wasn't helped by the fact that the otter disappeared into the reeds on the far side of the canal after realising that it was being watched) so our otter-spotting chain broke at just three.
Foxes have been doing the necessary to ensure the continuation of their species round our way the last few nights.
Which is fair enough, but I wouldn't mind if they were quieter about it.
@Frenchy you made me realise that our local foxes have been very quiet this year (or moved away). Two years ago they were very loud this time of year and you could see them around most nights. Following summer we enjoyed seeing an earth of foxlets (about 8) playing at the back of our house (neighbour's backyard).
Kingfisher and heron on the way to the Heriot-Watt picket this morning, and otter and cormorant on the way back, plus many of the more regular canal towpath wildlife spots (but no swans?).
On Sunday, a large number of noisy guillemots on the cliffs and what was likely a harbour porpoise popping up sporadically in one of the bays at St Abb's Head. Quite a spectacular place!
Spotted five dippers on the North Esk during our walk through Roslin Glen today: two obvious pairs, one on its ownsome. Then as we were sat having a cuppa at the picnic bench by the collapsed weir, a peregrine flew overhead above treetop height.
(Yesterday, as I was waiting at the lights to leave Longstone Sainsbury's, a heron flew up from behind the Waterside Social Club. Maybe had been enquiring about booking the function room...)
((Oh, and on Sunday as I was cycling through Roseburn Park, I saw an accumulation of about twenty or so goosander from the bend at the top of the ramp just before the path drops down to Roseburn Crescent. Don't think I've ever seen so many in one place before.)
@ejstubbs, that peregrine killed the sixth dipper
The Goodsanders are massing
They are warning us of our impending doom
“They are warning us of our impending doom”
This?
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as an MRP (multilevel regression and post-stratification) poll showed the Conservatives could be heading for near-wipeout at the next election.
“
Or this??
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If you wanted to kill as many people as possible, deniably and with no criminal consequences, what would you do? You’d do well to start with a bird flu.
“
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/08/next-pandemic-bird-flu-mink-farms-transmission
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Burdiehouse Burn Valley Park LNR
113 Species observed
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Otter swimming west along the canal at Meggetland as it was getting dusk just now.
Otter very prominent this morning just beyond the bypass on the canal. Quite a crowd stopping to watch!
The otter was munching away at a very large fish in the reeds at the far side of the canal by Dumbryden Road Bridge this morning.
Given that it was forecast to rain this morning, I didn't bother taking my old lightweight optical zoom camera that I finally got around to charging the battery for this weekend. Obviously I saw the otter quite close-up on the canal, diving and surfacing just metres away from me close to the Scott Russell Aqueduct... I had previously spotted bubbles rising in the canal at Wester Hailes so stopped to see what might emerge, startling the cormorant as it surfaced alongside me. To its credit, it quite casually swam away from me before diving, rather than flying away immediately.
I took my camera today so there was no sign of the otter.
Martins swooping over the water at Victoria Quay today. Snow expected?
A fox skulking away as I took the dogs out this evening. The well behaved one noticed, but the more excitable one thankfully didn't.
Not so much a highlight, but also what I believe was the unfinished tea of a sparrowhawk on top of the neighbour's hedge this evening. Possibly me going out that disturbed them; hopefully they'll come back and get the rest.
Lots of chiffchaffs singing at Penicuik House yesterday. Looking forward the other arrivals now. Not seen any hirundines yet. (The local micro-murmuration of starlings seems to be persisting with their vocal impression of swifts as they fly overhead, which catches me out all too often...)
Also lots of wrens singing, and a largish flock of goldcrest making an astonishing racket high up in the confers. Not migrants, of course, but good to know that a decent number made it through the winter.
Also, a female toad carrying her amorous mate across the path alongside the North Esk at one point. I was tempted to give them a helping hand to the other side but decided in the end to leave them to it.
Spikey visitor to the garden caught on trailcam last night for the first time this spring:
What with this fellow, and the frogs who filled the pond with spawn a couple of weeks back, fingers crossed our hostas should be safe again this year.
Lovely kingfisher action on river Wharfe, also Red Kite, and mandarin ducks.
Many sand martins towards Burnsall and Linton Falls.
Remains of a crayfish, eaten by an otter
Hunners. Of oystercatchers. Thousands of lambs.
Upper wharfedale now Darrowby if you know your all creatures great and small
Pair of dabchick (little grebe, Tachybaptus ruficollis "rapid diving redneck") building a nest platform near the path around the NW side of Blackford Pond. Maybe they ought to be given crowd control barriers, like the swans have been for their nest among the phragmites at the curling pond (SW) end.
(Photos taken but into the sun on the phone ⇒ rubbish. Might go back with a decent camera later today.)
Dabchicks are very smart at this time of year.
Saw a couple of barn owls hunting , along with a kite, on the "flat" lands north of York, early morning at the end of the Easter Arrow. Took my mind briefly off the niggles.
Saw a Mohican style black duck almost the inverse of a male goosander, stavely Cumbria this morning. Anyone fancy a stab?
Check out Male Hooded Merganser, that is what it resembled. non native to Staveley. Cumbria,
An adder near Whiteadder Reservoir today.
Adder? Nice
On the Roamin in the Gloamin audax, saw an osprey, red squirrel and badger. Also a dead otter.
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