Category: Garden WildlifePage 8 of 10
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…
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…
Birds Thirty-seven species of birds were recorded in the ‘Botanics’ in February 2014. Highlights were one or two Goosanders on the Pond on three days (9th, 10th,…
A pair of Goosanders (Mergus merganser) were on the main Pond today; the drake was also present in the early morning of 10 February. Today they spent a…
Just over 350 species of invertebrate were recorded at the Edinburgh Botanics in 2013. Of these, just under 200, or 55%, had not been recorded in the Garden…
On Thursday 6 February three horticultural staff and I had the very special privilege of watching an adult female Sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus having a long bath in the…
BIRDS Thirty-nine bird species were recorded in the Edinburgh ‘Botanics’ in January 2014. They included a possibly wintering Chiffchaff, heard calling (and trying to sing briefly) once (20th),…
I thought I’d recorded no insects in the Botanics this week, but when downloading the week’s images from my camera this evening I found this shot of an…
Yesterday morning almost the first thing I heard when coming through the North Gate was the call of a Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita)! It then gave a very brief,…
The figures are at last all in and 62 bird species were recorded in the Botanics in Edinburgh during 2013. This is one fewer than 2012 when 63…
Today I saw my first insect of 2014 in the Botanics. No ordinary fly or early bee; it was a STONEFLY of the genus Leuctra (needle flies), almost…
The story of dead bumblebees at the Botanics that had apparently been killed by the toxic effect of nectar from silver lime (Tilia tomentosa) http://stories.rbge.org.uk/?p=5319 has taken a new…
On the 21st June a BioBlitz was run at the Edinburgh Garden. Over a 24 hour period as many species as possible were recorded by around 30 expert…
A few weeks ago I was walking through the Edinburgh Garden near the foot of the Chinese Hillside when I was struck by the large number of dead…
During the recent BioBlitz mollusc specialist Adrian Sumner discovered an alien snail, Zonitoides arboreus, in the RBGE glasshouses. The diminutive snail, just 5mm across, lives as a wild…
At our staff conference today Mandy Haggith, poet in residence at the Botanics for the month of July, commented about the lack of butterflies she had seen in…
A recent report published by PLANTLIFE (Still & Byfield, 2007: available here.) begins, “Arable flora is the most threatened group of plants in Britain today”. Arable weeds which…
This is one of the richest areas of the Garden for wildlife. In the whole Garden, more than 460 animal species (mostly invertebrates such as insects and spiders)…
According to Horticulture Week, one-third of world food production and 87.5% of all flowering plant species on Earth depend on pollinators. Albert Einstein is credited with saying, “If…
Why not create a wilderness area in your own garden? For information see these two publications by PLANTLIFE: Grow Wild – Native flowers in your garden and Create…