Yesterday we took a lovely walk along the Water of Leith from Roseburn to Stockbridge. Storm Amy was still in evidence in the high winds, but it stayed dry. We had a wonderful view of a Dipper (though didn't get a photo) and did capture this Grey Heron on camera.
It was UK Fungus Day yesterday, a chance to celebrate fungi, which are such a feature of our autumns!
This memoir follows the seasons over a year, on sixteen acres of wild land along the Conestoga River in Southern Ontario, Canada. The land has been in the author's family for many years and she writes about it with a keen observational eye and a great affection for the wildlife that lives there.
The author starts by taking the reader on a tour along the river, introducing us to the wildlife and humans that share this place and inviting us to slow down and appreciate the natural treasures that surround us. She obviously knows the land very well, she knows where the raccoons live, where the beavers build their dams, and where the blackbirds nest. She is attuned to seasonal change such that she can tell us things like: "A patch of toothy-leaved herb Robert, its tiny pinkish blooms already nearly done, spreads out in emerald-green beneath a rift in the canopy of young cedars. In a few short weeks, we’ll see the yellow-orange spurred slippers of spotted jewelweed in their place."
We're then treated to Beeartt's nature diary, starting on 1 March, when snow still lies heavy on the ground through the seasons. She details the weather and the wildlife she sees around her, and includes interesting facts such as: "Red squirrels can even suss out the difference between maple species, singling out those with the highest sugar concentrations." This is followed by an exploration of the history of human use of maple syrup, which I found fascinating (even though I don't like the taste of maple syrup).
This use of nature observations as a way into exploring the ecology, geology, history and cultures of the area, is a real strength of the book, giving the reader a deep sense of the place. She also uses nature as a way into thinking about the divine and the nature of religious belief and for looking at issues such as climate change, pollution and nature deficit disorder. For every month she shares information about the flower (for example, the common Daisy is the flower for April) and possibly more information than we need about the birthstone.
It's a beautifully detailed book that leaves the reader with the impression that Beeaff would be a great person to have as a walking companion.
Infinite Paradise by Dianne Ebertt Beeaff published (2025) by She Writes Press
The day before we went on holiday to Dumfries and Galloway we visited Barnton Bunker - Edinburgh's hidden Cold War Nuclear Bunker! It's currently being restored and transformed into an arts venue. You can read a little more about the bunker itself in today's post over on my Shapeshifting Green blog.
The bunker is surrounded by open space on Corstorphine Hill, with some pretty dramatic cliffs, great views across to the Firth of Forth
and some unexpected residents. The goats are very friendly - here are two we made friends with.
The bunker keeps emus to scare off potential thieves and vandals, but the emus are pretty friendly too, during our visit, we were given special emu food that we could feed directly to the emus. The emu standing in front of the emu shed in the photo below is called Joyce
Subtitled History as if Animals Mattered, this scholarly book examines the role that animals have played in history. It is a project of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, bringing together academic articles from The Journal of Animal Ethics on a range of topics relating to the concept of animal history; key intellectuals who have shaped our attitudes to animals; meat eating and vivisection.
Of course, any animal history that we have access to, will be written by humans, though some postulate that perhaps some animals have their own histories, which they share in ways we can't understand (elephants being the species that strikes me as surely having their own history.) However we look at it animals are vital to our history, from the animals hunted by our long ago ancestors, to the cats that kept rats away from ancient Egyptian grain to the rats that spread the plague. It's also interesting to note that Edinburgh has more statues to animals than to women.
Jacob Brandler opens the discussion with his article "Do “Animals” Have Histor(ies)? Can/Should Humans Know Them? A Heuristic Reframing of Animal-Human Relationships". This article links the current developing interest in animal history to the increasing interest in history of minority groups within human society and suggests that a greater understanding of the place of animals in history leads to a more ethical treatment of animals today.
Violette Pouillard discusses two books about celebrity animals in Animal Biographies: Beyond Archetypal Figures, highlighting how individual animals are treated in captivity and how this contrasts with the lives of free-living animals.
In the section on historical intellectuals and their attitudes to animals, Cheryl E Abbate goes first with “Higher” and “Lower” Political Animals: A critical Analysis of Aristotle’s Account of the Political Animal which explores Aristotle's consideration of 'the political animal' and extends it to non-human animals, while Christina Hoenig looks at Augustine of Hippo on Nonhuman Animals. Both these articles examine the legacy left by these ancient influential thinkers. In “Mad Madge”: The Contribution of Margaret Cavendish to Animal Ethics, Lauren Bestwick examines Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673). Labelled "Mad" by her contemporaries for her radical views, she was an aristocrat who wrote philosophical works and poetry that defended the rational capacity of animals, while being aware that the prejudices against non-human animals were similar to those against women in the society she lived in. Alison Stone looks at Frances Power Cobbe and the Philosophy of Antivivisection. Cobbe (1822 - 1904) was primarily a campaigner who approached animal welfare as a moral philosopher.
The essays about vegetarianism are particularly interesting, offering fascinating insights into historical attitudes to those who refuse to eat meat. Historical Christian attitudes to meat eating, fasting and asceticism are examined in some detail by both Marcello Newall in Biblical Veganism: An Examination of 1 Timothy 4:1–8, and Carl Frayne in On imitating the regimen of immortality or Facing the diet of mortal reality: A Brief history of Abstinence from Flesh-Eating in Christianity. In Morality and Meat in the Middle Ages and Beyond, Christene d'Anca examines how "contemporary decisions to abstain from animal consumption mirror medieval ones" and how ancient prejudice against vegetarianism continues even today, though the nature of the prejudice nowadays is not so religious as it used to be. Carl Frayne reappears, now writing as Carl Tobias Frayne with The Anarchist Diet: Vegetarianism and Individualist Anarchism in Early 20th-Century France looks at the historic links between anarchism and veganism.
The final section of the book looks at vivisection. In Vivisection, Virtue Ethics, and the Law in 19th-century Britain, A W H Bates outlines the difference between Virtue Ethics, which "asks how a virtuous person would behave in a particular situation and emphasizes character and motives" and Utilitarian ethics, which claim that "the medical benefits of vivisection outweighed any unpleasantness or suffering". The essay then details the anti-cruelty laws that were brought in during that century and how they applied to vivisection (which those days wasn't common in Britain compared to some countries in continental Europe). Later, in " Boycotted hospital: the national Anti-vivisection hospital, London, 1903–1935" the same author looks at the history of the hospital that for three decades "treated the local poor and conscientious objectors to vivisection, who were assured that staff pledged not to experiment on animals or patients." “The New Superstition, the New Tyranny”: The Ethics and Contexts of John Cowper Powys’s Antivivisection" by Felix Taylor examines the antivivisectionist writings of the generally overlooked British novelist and philosopher John Cowper Powys (1872–1963).
"Animal Research, Safeguards, and Lessons from the Long History of Judicial Torture" by Adam Clulow and Jan Lauwereyns uses the history of the safeguards used to limit judicial torture to explore how animal research could more effectively be limited and policed, as the accepted notion of 'reduce, replace and refine' in animal testing has proven to be open to confusion and loopholes that mean that more animal testing continues.
This well researched, copiously referenced book covers a variety of aspects of our treatment of animals and will appeal to students of history and animal studies, as well as people involved in animal rights and conservation. It's a fascinating read, though the very academic approach and content will be off-putting for many general readers.
Animal History edited by Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey, published (July 2025) by Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
Disclaimer: I was sent a free pdf of this book in return for an honest review.
On our recent holiday in Dumfries and Galloway, we visited the grounds of Drumlanrig Castle, which offer beautiful woodland walks. (There's also a nice cafe!).
The walks offer lovely views across the countryside
The woodlands were full of amazing fungi when we visited. We were particularly interested to see these Fly Agarics. The photo below shows a fully developed Fly Agaric
and below is a newly emerging Fly Agaric, as it breaks through the soil.
(Fly Agarics are poisonous).
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A year ago on my Crafty Green Substack, I posted about how a good friend had died and how I was hoping to deal with all the stuff she left behind. Today, for Recycle Week, I posted about my progress. You can read it here.
One of the conservation success stories of recent decades has been the return of the Red Kite to Scotland (this is something I'll write more about on my Crafty Green Poet substack next Wednesday). We've travelled along the Galloway Kite Trail a few times in the past, but never before had we done the walk at Parton. This short walk passes between a small area of ancient woodland on one side and fields on the other.
Also notable were the wonderful lichens on the trees and rocks, her are just some of them:
There are lots of hides around the reserve, including a couple of tower hides, which allow for long views across the reserve. From one of these we had a great view of a Marsh Harrier (only the second time we've ever seen this rare bird of prey). The photo below sadly isn't as great as the view was in real life.
Through those windows you can spy on birds including Tree Sparrows (which are sadly quite rare these days) and Willow Tits (which are even rarer). In the photo below, on the left of the feeder are two Tree Sparrows, on the right, at the front there's a Blue Tit, at the back is a tit, which I think is a Willow Tit, but it's not clear enough and it might be a (much more common) Coal Tit....
After exploring the WWT reserve, we drove to the nearby National Nature Reserve, where we were sadly defeated by the mud and so we then went to Caerlaverock Castle
and walked through the Castle Woods,
Note: we don't have a car of our own, we use public transport to get around in Edinburgh. However, we always hire a car when we visit Dumfries and Galloway, as otherwise it would be almost impossible to get around.
