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CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Leisure
Wildlife highlight of the day
(7221 posts)-
Posted 9 years ago #
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Eight cygnets with their parents on the loch at Heriot-Watt.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Cheating as am in Orkney for work without bike(s), but the birdlife is making me homesick for when I lived here - wee wander at Rerwick Head on Sunday without binos and still saw turnstones, ringed plovers, curlews, oystercatchers, eiders, common gulls, a bonxie/great skua on pirate patrol, an adorable crowd of tysties, cormorants, fulmars, gannets fishing out to sea, and a short eared owl. (And a hare too.) Then a short stroll round the Peedie Sea last night and the air was full of house martins and swallows, terns (can never tell if they're common or arctic - they were v noisy though!), a couple of black headed gulls fishing, and some really cute dark-version (if that makes sense? some seem to have a lot more black on them) pied wagtails.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@unhurt
Wonderful. Thank you! (But what is a 'tystie'?)
Posted 9 years ago # -
@unhurt - did you hear something like a 1980s handheld computer game? Sorry for the iffy description of the call, but that is my closest approximation.
All the locals I mentioned it to immediately recognised what I meant, but none knew which bird was making the call!
It may even be a species with a talent for mimicry as that description doesn't appear to match any of the local population based on my listening of recorded birdsong back home. Mind you, I was trying to listen to birds I thought I might have seen at the same time, and it could be singing from on high, or from the ground.
It wasn't a curlew's song, or rather the curlew was heard with it's usual song elsewhere.
Robert
Posted 9 years ago # -
Iwrats- oh, sorry! Tystie = black guillemot in Orkney. Their wee red feet are the best.
Roibeard, was it an odd kind of rising-falling vibrating noise from up in the air? Could maybe be snipe "drumming", it's a really weird sound. They have special feathers that vibrate when they drop through the air to make a display call. I heard it the first time solo camping by Loch Loyal on a moonlit night, could not for the life of me work out what I was hearing! Eventually found a recording online to confirm what it was. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drumming_(snipe) - but despite the article they definitely do it during the day too, I heard one on Sunday.)
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Min - yes to the Lapwings! Do they not sound like a Gameboy or space invaders to you?
That said, the snipe's drumming is equally bizarre, just not what we heard...
Robert
Posted 9 years ago # -
A buzzard was mewling whilst harassing or being harassed by a seagull above the field north-west of Gogar Station Road bridge as I cycled by on the towpath this morning.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Min - yes to the Lapwings! Do they not sound like a Gameboy or space invaders to you?
Cool! Not sure. Maybe like not quite tuning into a radio station properly? Anyway, my brain must have known what you meant as it churned out Lapwing song when fed your description.
Snipe drumming is also a very cool and very strange sound, especially by the light of a full moon.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I was out with Keith Morton of the RSPB this morning checking out the route for our free led cycle rides this weekend. We're heading out from the Meadows to Scotland's Big Nature Festival in Musselburgh. We'll stop and highlight some of the nature that we'll see along the way. You can find more details here:
http://scottishbirdfair.org.uk/get-there-greener/Come and join us
Posted 9 years ago # -
I saw the call for volunteer leaders for that, but sadly the training being the weekend before when I had family visiting I couldn't sign up. This weekend we're helping friends train for a charity walk, but at least should involve some wildlife, looking for the cuckoos at Hopes Reservoir again.
Cygnets in the Figgate are still 7 strong, and unexpectedly got a very brief glimpse of the Kingfisher yesterday as well.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I didn't get to leave work until 7.35 this evening but when I did I saw a pair of Red-legged Partridges. It turns out not much lifts the spirits like a pair of RLPs.
I also spotted a Sparrow nest as well.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Okay, I totally get what you mean about lapwing noises - they do have a computer-generated air to them!
Posted 9 years ago # -
Sparrowhawk in the Figgate at lunchtime. First time I've seen him in a little while.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I am just coming to the end of a break in Tuscany where I've enjoying some hilly rides in fantastic scenery and a variety of interesting wildlife. This evening after of a day when Tuscany's weather seemed to be helping us re-aclimatise back to Scottish weather, we spotted a roe deer with two newborn fawns. That was our wildlife highlight of the holiday.
Posted 9 years ago # -
On walk up WoL path tonight I was having a nosey at the one hole golf course, always like to keep an eye on the grass cutting on the green. Chap comes out his living room and plays the par three. Anyway, three mistletoe thrushes on the fairway. I have always liked a throstle.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Just gorgeous
Posted 9 years ago # -
A buzzard was soaring over the loch at Heriot-Watt as I was leaving the campus yesterday. I hope that it wasn't taking too much interest in any of the cygnets below...
Posted 9 years ago # -
Avocet. Though that's on the live webcam feed for Springwatch that's on the iPad beside the work computer....
Posted 9 years ago # -
That might be considered cheating!
Posted 9 years ago # -
Well. Yes. I've already this morning got Avocet, Marsh Harrier, Bittern, Redshank, Shoveler, various gulls, and a stickleback. This desk-based wildlife spotting is a doddle (every now and then I forget it's there in the background and hear an odd bird call and look out the window... Mind you, not as confused as the cat was)
Posted 9 years ago # -
Posted 9 years ago # -
Above horse head height?
Posted 9 years ago # -
About ok for giraffes.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I bought some live mealworms for the first time a week or so ago, tempted by the cute photographs of birds chomping on them. The birds ignored them for days but have finally caught on and are eating them. I have just seen a Blackbird swoop down, wolf down several then fill her beak up with an improbable number of them before flying off.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Where'd you get those?
Posted 9 years ago # -
Jackdaw flew by with what I thought was a large leaf hanging from its beak.
Turned out to be a rasher of bacon!
(There's a Greggs nearby.)
Posted 9 years ago # -
Haha, that is an unusual sight!
WC - I got the mealworms from Wiggly Wigglers. They send them through the post and they are packed with bran to keep them going. I might look into getting a subscription.
Posted 9 years ago #
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