Yeuach. Wildlife lowlight.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Leisure
Wildlife highlight of the day
(7221 posts)-
Posted 10 years ago #
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just heard that the panda's pregnant....
Posted 10 years ago # -
I also saw Germander Speedwell on my way down the Brunt and Tormentil as I struggled my way up towards Whitecastle. Themed flora.
Edit - the panda's pregnant? That's big news.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Yeuach. Wildlife lowlight.
Gives you an insight into the gamekeeper mentality. They hang crows up on fences because crows are clever, and can and do take the hint. Moles, on the other hand, are not very smart, have terrible eyesight and live underground.
Moles need to be controlled because stones in molehills break the blades of combine harvesters, but there is no need to display the corpses other than as a Deliverance-style "Careful now, townies" display.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"just heard that the panda's pregnant...."
Not as such -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-28212994
Posted 10 years ago # -
Last night on the way home, I saw a bird which, while not uncommon, I haven't seen since I was a teenager.
Bridge eight on the canal towpath, where there's a random chicane, a male blackcap was hovering over the reeds in a shaft of sunlight. I stopped to see what was going on, crept up to it and found the fledgling it was feeding. The fledgling took one look at me and demanded food.
A very friendly passing Kiwi lady asked if my bike was OK. It's quite a community that towpath.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I understand that dead moles are strung up on fences because in the past the molecatcher was paid per dead mole, and needed to display the evidence. I don't know if payment per mole still occurs.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I've been looping past Dunaspie loch the past week or so on my way to work. I've seen a heron up there every morning looking for breakfast.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@fimm
Payment is per mole, evidenced in the past by the skins which went to making trousers. I have an academic book on moles at home - it's one of my all-time favourites. There's a mathematical formula that lets you calculate how often a mole will dig an air shaft in a given horizontal tunnel and an x-ray of a seagull that died after the live mole it swallowed burrowed through its chest wall.
Posted 10 years ago # -
A rather stressed looking roe deer running parallel to me on the old A90. It was stuck in the Agilent site presumably looking for a way to escape all the heavy machinery.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Saw a blue whale today and a T. Rex, natural history museum was stowed out
Posted 10 years ago # -
RB merganser plus two exceptionally cute chicks in Muessleburgh
Posted 10 years ago # -
Posted 10 years ago #
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Would you please bow your heads for a minute's silence to acknowlege the passing of the Kingsknowe
water volerat, much beloved by @IWRATS.This morning it was stretched out dead beside the towpath...
Posted 10 years ago # -
"
Public butterfly count aims to check countryside health"
Posted 10 years ago # -
@Greenroofer I also spotted that, although I fear that you are perhaps being a little bit too optimistic when referring to it as "the" rather than "a" Kingsknowe rat ;)
Posted 10 years ago # -
@greenroofer, @jdanielp
Had I not been in the midst of a Tour fantasy, I'd have carried out a brief interment ceremony for the scaly-tailed water vole Ratus edinburgensis who has passed from our lives this morning in the glossy-coated prime of his all too brief life. He brought us joy and some excitement as he scurried around the banks of the canal. He will be missed by both a generation of cyclists and Maximum Spaceman's dogs. He is survived by eighteen ratlets and seventy three great-ratlets. No flowers please, but discarded junk food containers can be left floating in the canal.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Perhaps he wasn't missed by maximum spaceman's dogs and that was how he came to find himself stretched out at the side.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@acsimpson
A very good point. His border terrier has the look of a ratter. I'm now wondering if the gloves and the tartan shopping bag on wheels are actually discreet pest control equipment.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I am hopeless at spotting wildlife, so usually have to content myself with spotting wilddead.
On the weekend, saw a not-so-fresh fox by the side of the road, and badly underestimated how long one should refrain from breathing in, after passing such an olfactory insult, when a tailwind is present.
Also saw two fresh hawks or raptors of some kind anyway, both roadkill. Oddly enough not near any other roadkill that would presumably be the only thing liable to tempt them onto the road?
What I did see alive was either a bluddy huge buzzard or an eagle, between Banchory and the Cairn O'Mount, and a young deer that wasn't in a hurry to get off the road as I approached in Montreathmont Forest.
Posted 10 years ago # -
bluddy huge buzzard or an eagle
The Cairn O'Mount is a bit far east for a Golden Eagle, but not impossible. Youngsters wander to odd places in late summer, but it's a bit early for that.
Unless it was a tourist eagle, what you may have seen is a white-tailed eagle. They have now been introduced to the east coast and nested in Glen Clova last year. The first time I saw one it reminded me of a Lancaster bomber. They are gargantuan and cumbersome, while golden eagles, though big, are incredibly agile when they get going.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I did a double post.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I am hopeless at spotting wildlife
Me too. So it was helpful that the wasp that landed on my arm the other day alerted me to its presence by stinging me continuously as I barrelled down a hill in traffic, unable to do much about it.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Yesterday going through East Lothian I discovered corn lice. Others called it blackfly, or bogfly. Not exactly a highlight.
Posted 10 years ago # -
A rat, scuttling across the path towards Lochend pond on Saturday morning, mere inches from the 2010 child's front wheel.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Walking through the centre of Aberdeen yesterday - sleeping on a tenement entrance quarter light - a swallowtail moth. Beautiful, and, according to the book, 'rarely spotted by the non-enthusiast'.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Were you a "non-enthusiast" before you spotted it?
Posted 10 years ago # -
I'm not yet a moth enthusiast, but this one was jewel-like. A shard of luminous jade trying to hide (or possibly just show off) on grubby granite. I am an enthusiast for unexpected beauty.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"I am an enthusiast for unexpected beauty"
Nice!
Posted 10 years ago # -
A rat, scuttling across the path towards Lochend pond on Saturday morning, mere inches from the 2010 child's front wheel.
Saw a fat rat scuttling across the path right infornt of me, headed in the direction of Pirniefield on the Restalrig - Seafield path.
Posted 10 years ago #
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