purplerabbits

Your Xmas cards from me...

My Paris photos are up. I made them into a set, largely for my mum, but there are some I'm particularly pleased with including a bunch of gargoyles...


and this

Yesterday I went on a boat and I saw puffins and baaaby peregrines and kittiwakes and razorbills and shags and guillimots and gannets and cormorants and a island that looks like a ship on purpose and a grey seal and some common seals and fulmers and stuff.

Work sucks big time

Today's bunny seems very apposite.

But puffins.

Also on the weekend I saw a totally unexpected red-legged partridge in someone's back garden next to the canal at Craiglockart, which was odd, but cool, but odd.

Meadows Yard Local Nature Reserve is a small site off Fillyside Road near Seafield. The Number 12 bus goes there, so I went up today. It is quite tiny but very cute with a wee pond and some bird boxes which tits were prospecting but not using yet I think. It was full of singing gold- and green- and chaffinches today, plus blackbirds, bluetits, dunnock. PLUS a few bunnies right out in the open and a FOX. Which I turned a corner and almost walked into. Twice. He seemed right at home there and very red in the sunlight.

Then I went across to the shore and walked right along the sea front to Portobello - seeing Oystercatchers, Redshank, bar-tailed godwit, Eider duck and four flavours of gull, plus a lot of starlings. I know starlings aren't doing so well some places, but Portobello has plenty in case anyone else runs out.

Plus there was an easily identified stone. Just the one. Which was cool in a very odd way.

I caught the train to Linlothgow yesterday and walked round the loch. It was loverly sun and a hell of a lot of birds including two new ducks - scaup and pochard plus a few great crested grebes, not doing a lot yet, and goldeneye displaying.

Full list

blue tit, great tit
chaffinch, green finch
robins (numerous - singing their lungs out), blackbird
crow, jackdaw, rook and magpie
feral pigeon and wood pigeon
kestrel (seen hovering from the train) and buzzards circling
pied wagtail
wren
dunnock
many noisy house sparrows
common, herring, black-headed and lesser-black-backed gull (just one of that last)
mute swan
greylag and white geese
mallard, including some crosses
tufted duck, pochard, goldeneye, scaup
coot, moorhen
great crested grebe
cormorants, many, on Cormorant island and on the other crannog island that is not called cormorant island
probably a distant heron

I also saw bunnies at the loch and a fox from the train, which was a bonus.

It's spring out there - apparently. Or at least ducks are fighting, tits are singing, swans look like they're sizing up nesting sites and snowdrops and crocuses are out. Today I wander down the canal to Craiglockart pond and saw: ( Read more... )
Which seems a lot, but they're all out and about and the trees are still bare which makes it easier.

Here is my official picture of Spring personified, but sadly the batteries ran out before the goosanders.

Also I heard *one* chaffinch sing - which may be a thing that only happens on one day before they all start...

Also squirrels and snowdrops and croci and stuff.

Post to be extended...

Photos of bird species in the wild I have so far ( not very many )

My bird list is now at 94, since yesterday I had a day off and, as well as achieving actual Stuff that needed doing at home, I went for a three hour walk round Hermitage of Braid and up to the start of Braid hill and saw fieldfares (in a field, reasonably enough) and a Great Spotted Woodpecker. This was my First Ever Woodpecker ever, even including before I started the list, so I was overjoyed for many minutes and am still rather chuffed whenever I think about it.

I really want to arrange more birdwatching, even by planning quite far ahead if need be, as I could do with company, drivers and/or people who are prepared to accompany me to sites further afield. Is anyone else on my list interested in wildlife at all? Or maybe interested in going to a nice country site and then doing different things?

Pure GIP - I took this at the London Wetlands Centre.

I have uploaded a bunch of pictures to my flickr - including the most cutest baaaby moorhen in the whole world evar - so go and massage my ego with comments damn you!

I now have a flickr account (guess what it's called...), plus I've upload some bird pictures in my LJ scrapbook. The question is, which do people prefer, and how big should the pictures be - in Mb and pixels, as I'm sure mine are miles too big but I may just be out of date...