CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Leisure

Wildlife highlight of the day

(7161 posts)

  1. ejstubbs
    Member

    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?)

    Posted 1 year ago #
  2. chdot
    Admin

  3. jdanielp
    Member

    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.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  4. amir
    Member

    A gang of ravens hanging around in Eskbank. Surprising - can it be so? The call is distinct from other cros

    Posted 1 year ago #
  5. gembo
    Member

    The way of the Raven might involve The Justin Lees or The Sun Inn

    Posted 1 year ago #
  6. jdanielp
    Member

    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.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  7. Frenchy
    Member

    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.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  8. bill
    Member

    @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).

    Posted 1 year ago #
  9. jdanielp
    Member

    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!

    Posted 1 year ago #
  10. ejstubbs
    Member

    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.)

    Posted 1 year ago #
  11. gembo
    Member

    @ejstubbs, that peregrine killed the sixth dipper

    The Goodsanders are massing

    They are warning us of our impending doom

    Posted 1 year ago #
  12. chdot
    Admin

    “They are warning us of our impending doom”

    This?

    as an MRP (multilevel regression and post-stratification) poll showed the Conservatives could be heading for near-wipeout at the next election.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/09/truss-allies-calls-sweeping-tax-cuts-fuel-further-tory-infighting

    Or this??

    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

    Posted 1 year ago #
  13. chdot
    Admin

    Burdiehouse Burn Valley Park LNR

    113 Species observed

    https://ebird.org/hotspot/L9681066?yr=all&m=&rank=hc

    Posted 1 year ago #
  14. jdanielp
    Member

    Otter swimming west along the canal at Meggetland as it was getting dusk just now.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  15. jdanielp
    Member

    Otter very prominent this morning just beyond the bypass on the canal. Quite a crowd stopping to watch!

    Posted 1 year ago #
  16. jdanielp
    Member

    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.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  17. jdanielp
    Member

    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.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  18. jdanielp
    Member

    I took my camera today so there was no sign of the otter.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  19. amir
    Member

    Martins swooping over the water at Victoria Quay today. Snow expected?

    Posted 12 months ago #
  20. Frenchy
    Member

    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.

    Posted 12 months ago #
  21. ejstubbs
    Member

    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.

    Posted 11 months ago #
  22. ejstubbs
    Member

    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.

    Posted 11 months ago #
  23. gembo
    Member

    Lovely kingfisher action on river Wharfe, also Red Kite, and mandarin ducks.

    Posted 11 months ago #
  24. gembo
    Member

    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

    Posted 11 months ago #
  25. ejstubbs
    Member

    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.)

    Posted 11 months ago #
  26. amir
    Member

    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.

    Posted 11 months ago #
  27. gembo
    Member

    Saw a Mohican style black duck almost the inverse of a male goosander, stavely Cumbria this morning. Anyone fancy a stab?

    Posted 11 months ago #
  28. gembo
    Member

    Check out Male Hooded Merganser, that is what it resembled. non native to Staveley. Cumbria,

    Posted 11 months ago #
  29. jdanielp
    Member

    An adder near Whiteadder Reservoir today.

    Posted 11 months ago #
  30. amir
    Member

    Adder? Nice

    On the Roamin in the Gloamin audax, saw an osprey, red squirrel and badger. Also a dead otter.

    Posted 11 months ago #

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