Wildlife in Oban

 We're just back from a lovely (but very rainy) few days on the west coast of Scotland. We stayed in the pretty harbour town of Oban. Over the next few posts, I'll share some of our photos. Today, I'll focus on Oban itself. 

The waters around Oban are famous (for us at least!) for the Black Guillemots that nest in the walls of the promenade

 We stayed in a Bed and Breakfast very close to Dunollie Woods

which are part of the grounds of Dunollie Castle, which you can see in the background of the photo below 

the woodland walk also offers good views across the water 

We saw a Red Squirrel in these woods, but it didn't want to pose for a photo. Unlike this Hooded Crow in the centre of Oban 

Trees in Spring

As many readers will know, I regularly patrol Edinburgh's Water of Leith river, picking litter and recording wildlife. I've become even more than usual fascinated by the development of fruits on trees. I don't mean the obvious fruits, like cherries or apples (though their development is also fascinating) but specifically beech and larch. 

At the beginning of May, I noticed these lovely little pom-poms on a beech tree

 

Today those pom-poms (on a different beech tree!) look like this:

Meanwhile, the larch cones on 25 March this year looked like this

and today they look like this (same tree, different cones)

(I'm preparing a post on my Crafty Green Poet Substack to show the development of larch cones, which hopefully will be posted in a couple of weeks, though it depends on how quickly the cones develop to full maturity!)
 

Sunshine, Birds and Insects at Musselburgh

 We had a lovely walk at Musselburgh yesterday. We started by walking along the River Esk 

 where we saw a good number of Eider ducks and their tiny ducklings (we counted 17 ducklings in total), though the water doesn't look to be the ideal state for birds to live in

 

We continued along the John Muir Walkway along the Firth of Forth and on to the Lagoons, where there were several Shelducks and not very many other birds (but this is to be expected, winter is the best time to see lots of birds here)

We also saw a few butterflies, including this Common Blue  

and a few Speckled Woods

 There were several damselflies, including this mating pair of Common Blue damselflies, being photo bombed by a second male

 and a Blue Tailed Damselfly 

 and finally a very bright Early Bumblebee

 

 

Arthur's Seat

 We had a lovely walk round Arthur's Seat yesterday, the weather was lovely, sunny and mild. 

We were particularly keen to check on the tadpoles in Dunsapie Loch. Regular readers may remember the scenes from a few weeks ago when we found a lot of toads in the loch. Well yesterday, we found a lot of tadpoles! 

Hopefully a good number of these will grow up to be toads (or in a few cases frogs). 

There were lots of Chaffinches singing around the hill 

and several pheasants who seemed to want to pose for the camera

We were delighted to watch this Roe Deer as she walked across the field - we wondered whether she had a fawn hidden away somewhere...

 

The Birds Foot Trefoil was beautifully in flower  

much to the delight of this Red Tailed Bumblebee (one of the few bees we saw yesterday)

 The Hawthorn trees were also in almost full bloom 

and were surrounded by St Marks Flies (though we didn't get any photos of those - they're big black flies with dangly legs which come out in late April, early May.)

 

 

First Swift of the Year!

Do you see the swifts are here again?
They swoop so low and soar so high
I think there may be more than ten -
do you see the swifts are here again?
We know it's summer round here when
our favourite bird comes gliding by
You see the swifts are here! Again
they sweep so low and soar so high!

**

We're lucky enough to live in an area of Edinburgh where there are several active swift nests sites. Sadly, numbers of these amazing birds have been severely declining across the UK over the past several years (a decline of 65% since 1995), due largely to a lack of nest sites and reducing populations of insects (their main food source). (See this 2020 article on the Bird Guides website for some thoughts on the factors behind the decline of the swift).

I saw the first Swift of the year today at 10am, flying over the roofs opposite our flat. 

We put up two nest boxes on our front wall a few years ago (we persuaded the roofing contractor to fit them when our last roofing work was carried out). I haven't seen the swifts going into the nest boxes, though they have flown close over the past couple of years. Hopefully this year may be the year that they decide to use the nest-boxes....

I enjoyed this video from the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) about how we can help swifts. I played it at quite a high volume with the windows open, hoping that the calls of the swifts on the soundtrack would attract the local swifts to our nest boxes. Another great video from the RSPB is this one, which shows the route of one swift as it flies from its breeding grounds in the UK across Europe and around Africa and back here for the next breeding season, a journey during which it will not land at all! I particularly like this video as it looks as though this swift passed directly over the village where I lived in Malawi for two years! 

Bank Holiday in the Dells

Monday was a bank holiday so for my regular walk along the Water of Leith in the Dells, I left the litter picker at home and Crafty Green Boyfriend came along and took most of the photos below. The weather was lovely and there were plenty of birds around including this very round Robin

There were also plenty of insects to see. We saw a surprising number of Hairy Shieldbugs (below) in a small area 

and in the same relatively small area we saw a good number of different hoverflies, including this Long Hoverfly (Sphaerophoria scripta)

this Chequered Hoverfly (Melanostoma sp)

 this Banded Hoverfly (Syrphus sp) (with 7-Spot Ladybird) 

 and this Common Dainty (Baccha elongata) which we don't see particularly often, though it is apparently quite common

Other insects included several butterflies, including Comma  

and Small Tortoiseshell 

Also a Scorpion Fly  

and a Dark-edged Bee Fly 

A lovely way to spend a bank holiday! 

**

My latest Crafty Green Poet Substack post, focussing on the hares we saw at the weekend at Dalkeith Country Park is now up, you can read it here.   

Dalkeith Country Park

We try to visit Dalkeith Country Park at about this time every year, primarily to see the Bluebells, which make a spectacular display, alongside the Ramsons, which are generally in full bloom at the same time too. We had timed it perfectly! 

 

Some of our favourite paths around the park are currently shut off, so we needed to find a different route

The path opened out at one point and we passed some barns where a group of Swallows were nesting, it was lovely to see them all flying around. Even more wonderful, was to see two hares chasing each other around the fields! We've never had such good views of hares before! Here are a couple of photos of just one of the hares

Spring in Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens

 We always love walking in Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens at this time of year. The gardens have a large variety of rhodendrons and azaleas that bloom in sequence over Spring. A different selection were in bloom when we visited the gardens in March than were out yesterday. Here are some of the blooms from yesterday

 

We also recorded all the birds we saw for the BTO Birds in Greenspaces Project, which you can get involved with here, if you're in the UK. We were particularly pleased to see this Nuthatch:

We were also delighted to see a good number of Hairy Footed Flower Bees in exactly the same area of the gardens as we had seen them last year. Last year we had only seen females here, but  this year we saw both the brownish males 

and the black females 

 (Thanks to Crafty Green Boyfriend for the photos of the Nuthatch and Bees)

Spring Flowers

 One of the things I love at this time of year is to see all the Spring flowers coming into bloom. 

Lesser Celandines have been blooming for a while, but are now at their best

while the Wood Anemones are just coming into bloom 

 

and the young female cones on the larch trees are halfway towards being fully grown 

I'm fascinated by the development of larch cones and, in 2019 I shared this post showing their development. I've been taking photos of the cones every week this year and will be sharing another post about cone development on my Crafty Green Poet Substack in due course.