OCTOBER 2024
October got off to a warm start…but it often does, when you’re in Greece!! The highlight of this first week of the month was photographing flamingos & pelicans in their natural environment. I’d never seen either of these two birds before.
It was quite a contrast arriving back in Edinburgh.
Leaping Salmon
My main aim for the second half of the month, was to wait for the water levels to get to a point that I would be able to photograph leaping salmon in Perthshire. Thankfully, water levels and weather fell into place in the final week of the month. Photographing leaping salmon is a challenge but also very therapeutic – almost mesmerising at times!
Kingfishers
Back in Edinburgh, it was time to try and assess the kingfisher population on the Water of Leith. October is the first month after breeding season that gives a good indication of what the kingfisher breeding season has been like. Sadly this year, the results are not good.
Whilst my methods are not scientific & I am not regarded by anyone, as an authority on ‘kingfishers on the Water of Leith’, I believe that walking 100s of miles on the Water of Leith over the last 4 years has given me a reasonable idea of the position. Over the last few years, I can say that I see one kingfisher every one mile that I walk on the river, at any time of the year. When October comes around each year, I count the kingfishers at various points over a 10 day period. The result is always the same – one kingfisher per one mile.
However, this year has been different and the results are looking more like one kingfisher per six miles. There are reasons for this.
Firstly:
we had substantial flooding at the end of December 2023. Floods displace all wildlife on our rivers and it takes them a while to get their lives back in order. It takes even longer if holts, setts, earths & all other resting places are under water. This is hard enough in the winter but when it happens during breeding season, at the end of May, as it did in 2024, it can be devastating. Many kingfishers have their tunnel nests on the Water of Leith riverbanks and as the water levels rose from 0.5m to 2.3m, many of these nests found themselves underwater.
Secondly:
a kingfisher knows every perch on its stretch of the water. These perches are usually over still or slow moving water, in shaded parts of the river, as fish don’t like the sun. They use these perches week after week, month after month and year after year. Unfortunately, 100s of these perches have been cut down during 2024. Many of them in the kingfisher hotspots, such as Saughton Allotments, Murrayfield/Roseburn, Warriston/St Mark’s Park & Redbraes. This work was carried out as part of a flood management strategy. However, those making the decision, on what to cut away and where, have been over zealous in their instructions. It would appear that little or no thought has been given to the kingfishers on the water.
Thirdly:
there has been incidents involving an over enthusiastic dog-walker, with a camera, disturbing kingfishers, at their nesting site. This individual was spoken to and it was made clear to that person that kingfishers were a Schedule 1 species and protected by law. As a result, the adult kingfishers sadly abandoned their nesting site and never attempted a second brood. I have decided not to mention the specific area but it is yet another renowned kingfisher area, without young kingfishers, in 2024.
I will continue to monitor the kingfisher population and hopefully will be able to report that numbers have returned before the breeding season starts next year.
Otters on the Water of Leith
And finally, I am hoping that we will have some otter cubs back on the Water of Leith very soon. Having spotted one of the mothers collecting bedding material, on the water, a few weeks ago, it would appear that she has recently given birth. We lost 2 set of cubs in December 2023 floods and the same again in floods at the end of May 2024. So I will be keeping fingers (& toes) very tightly crossed for the next batch of otter cubs on the Water of Leith.
