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.
@Roibeard - have a peek over the wall if you're ever in the neighbourhood after dark. Just north of the junction with Double Hedges - the entire shoal siege of them look all shifty and saunter off into the shadows.
I think they're ashamed of eating worms instead of fish.
I stumbled across them once with the boys around 2045 - amazing to see the ghostly silhouettes in the grounds. Needless to say, bedtime was delayed further that evening!
Robert
I was busy watching a squadron of sparrows in the garden when a Redcap* unexpectedly flew in! She quickly flew out again but still nice to see.
*female Blackcap.
A cheeky little fox crossed my path on the NEPN around ravelston last night. Didn't so much as even flinch as I approached at speed. must be used to the cyclists!
I flinched as the Kingsknowe Rat made a reappearance last night. It ran along the towpath LEDs, causing my brain to partially fail. Blue luminous rats are not a good thing to see.
@Beano The foxes in Glasgow used to hang out on top of car bonnets like cats keeping warm. They didn't care at all when you passed at speed. If anything it makes you wonder what a fox could do if it felt like leaping at you from the roof of a 4x4 as you passed.
Dead shrew on the a70 quite spherical with gut parasites? Very flat vole on NEPN
Buzzard sitting in the quarry between St Davids and Inverkeithing about 8am this morning
A squirrel this morning which ran across my path. I saw it coming down the tree and making a dash straight for me so braked and it continued 2 inches in front of my wheel. I don't think it would have been so lucky if it was dark.
I then spotted a couple of sparrow-hawks(?) above Castlandhill Road performing an aerial ballet.
From the main road through Duddingston this afternoon
Figgy King 4 by blackpuddinonnabike, on Flickr
Figgy King 2 by blackpuddinonnabike, on Flickr
At about the very end of the usefulness of a 500mm lens and even then heavily cropped....
@WC that's a pretty impressive picture. Am I right in thinking that your 500mm lens combined with the D90 would give you the equivalent of a 750mm lens?
@WC nice kingfisher pictures!
I spotted a weasely/stoaty thing slinking across the path in the distance, a kestrel and a buzzard during a fairly epic walk from Morningside to Carlops yesterday.
I'm in the early stages of Eisvogeleifersuchtschaden.
How can I fail to see an electric blue and orange bird?
They are surprisingly difficult to see. That colour is great camouflage under the right conditions. Learning to recognise their whistle can help. Plus being lucky.
@Min
Maybe It's payback for my super-power which is spotting sparrowhawks?
@IWRATS it's easier to spot the blue, but when the canal kingfisher is perched it is generally facing the towpath in such a way that the orange blends with the background.
@jdanielp - picked good day for Pentlands, never felt it so calm. I spotted a Whooper swan (see Spotted thread). It was whooping the bejesus out of the water meadow west of thriepmuir reservoir. I think the swan was astonished that its whoop was not being carried away on the wind. I actually speak Swanish and it was very happy indeed.
@gembo indeed, although despite the calm there was still a fairly biting wind around Carnethy Hill. I was walking more in the direction of Thriepmuir Reservoir a couple of weeks ago on a similarly calm day but missed the swan.
wind dropped to nothing at about 3pm (though we were in the valley out towards the waterfall at LoganLea) - swans were out in force either side of the bridge before beech avenue. The lochs were as mirrors. almost a little freaky. What with all the whooping
Of course kingfishers aren't actually blue, but are brown... (Which just means the light has to be hitting them the right way for the blue to really shine). Definitely need to be lucky. I was looking for my regular foxes, saw the blue, and usually it'll be some bit of detritus lying in the burn. Something said 'no', which then always becomes a race to get the camera out of the bag quickly enough.
Looking for it later I got fooled into following a Dipper.
@acsimpson, I think that's right. Hoping to update the camera soon, which has the same crop factor, but better resolution.
The bright sunshine today, for what feels like the first weekday morning in a while, definitely helped me to spot the kingfisher landing in one of the increasingly dense bushes near Hermiston House Road bridge. It only perched there briefly before I spooked it and it flew away under the bridge as usual, although it took an odd trajectory initially over the back garden of Hermiston House rather than immediately flying out over the canal for a change.
Oh, I *very* nearly ran over a rat last night just as I joined the towpath from Hermiston House Road bridge. It ran out so late that I only just saw the movement in my lower left peripheral vision... Reassuringly, I heard a rustle from the vegetation to my right moments later, which suggests that it somehow made it safely across.
The cormorant passed me in flight this morning, heading south while I was cycling north along the north-south section of the canal towards the edge of Wester Hailes.
The kingfisher was perched on a lower branch of one of the trees towards the bottom of Hermiston House garden.
Dog Fox by blackpuddinonnabike, on Flickr
Late night big dog Fox at the back door.
@jdanielp
The cormorant (from the French 'corbeau de mer' or 'sea crow' doncha know) was fishing at Bridge 8 by the time I rocked up. They are dinosaurs.
Could you make friends with the kingfisher and detain it for my inspection? Offer it a sprat or a fingerling maybe.
@Wilmington's Cow
That's a really nice photo.
@IWRATS it is difficult to make friends given that it doesn't generally hang around long when I arrive on the scene. Today, I suspect that it may have been perched on the towpath side of the canal for a change, but by the time I saw it it was flying diagonally across the canal to the far side, over the head of a bemused goosander.
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