Category: Garden WildlifePage 7 of 9

New plant for Midlothian found in Botanics

Discovery of a plant previously unknown in an area is not what you might expect to happen within a botanic garden. Such places have large managed collections of…

A Fleet of Admirals

The last couple of weeks of September have been fantastic for Red Admiral butterflies. Six at a time have been seen on several occasions, and on Friday 26th…

August 2014 Garden Wildlife Report

August 2014 was another mostly warm and dry month with only two days with significant rain, one those being very wet. There was one day near the end…

July 2014 Garden Wildlife Report

July 2014 was sunny, sunny, sunny, and WARM. By the end of the month, despite a few days with some early mist and even some rain, things were…

June 2014 Garden Wildlife Report

The first half of June 2014 was rather unsettled with quite a lot of rain but the second half was much more settled and summery with some quite…

Scarlet Pimpernel on Botanics Cottage site

Early this morning on my way in to my office I had a look at some of the annual plants that are appearing near the north boundary of…

Tree Bumblebee is Botanics’ 700th wildlife species

On 15 June I posted a blog entry here, “Tree Bumblebee – Coming to a garden near you, and maybe a Garden near you” (see http://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/11851). David Adamson,…

Nuthatch reaches Edinburgh Garden at last!

This morning while walking through the top part of the Chinese Hillside on the way to my office I heard an unusual ‘chup-chup’ call that I had not…

Tree Bumblebee – coming to a garden near you, and maybe a Garden near you

Tree Bumblebee, Bombus hypnorum, first arrived in Britain from the Continent in 2001. From its initial base in south-east England it has spread northwards rapidly, and the first…

May 2014 Garden Wildlife Report

May 2014 was rather warm but also rather dull for much of the time, at least weather-wise. However it was anything but dull in terms of the wildlife…

BioBlitz at Logan

After the success of the BioBlitz last year at Edinburgh there will be another one at LOGAN BOTANIC GARDEN starting at 5 p.m. on Friday 27 June and…

April 2014 Garden Wildlife Report

First of all I need to apologise for the lateness of this report! The May monthly report will follow in the next few days. Birds  — Thirty-seven species…

Moth trapping in the Garden

Thanks to the enthusiasm of James and Thomas from the local Developing Ecological Surveying Skills (DESS) team at the SWT office near the Garden there is now a…

The first Cuckoo ….

Last Sunday, 11 May, about half an hour before the Garden opened, three of the horticulturists (Clare Morter, Neil Davidson and Peter Wilson) all heard a Cuckoo calling…

March 2014 Wildlife Report

                March 2014 came in like a lamb but the ‘lion’ arrived around the first weekend with high winds that closed…

Featured Image: Botanics Heron

It is a pleasure to feature Alexis Manson‘s beautiful shot of the heron that often hangs out at Edinburgh botanics. If you wait long enough at this time…

Some bird life highlights on a spring morning

On a walk around the garden on Saturday it was not only the people who were enjoying the plants. The birds were enjoying the garden too. We were…

Frog spawn

Spring is here, the frogs know!

First bees of the year at the Botanics

I saw a Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) on the Camellia in front of the glasshouse range on 6 March. Heather McHaffie saw a bumblebee on the rhododendron beside…

First hoverflies of 2014!

The warm spring sunshine at lunchtime today brought out not just one but three different species of hoverfly, the first ones seen in the Garden this year. The…