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Glorious day's walking. After a few miles of greys and sleet, the sky swiftly turned blue and puffs of cloud danced above the sea. A walk full of the promise of spring - snowdrops blanketing the woodland floor, daffodils starting to peek out, woodpeckers creaking in the trees. Kept bumping into wonderful locals brimming with love and passion for the nature in their communities, as well as enjoying wild delights from sunlit waterfalls to waves whipped into white horses along the shore.

On Thursday, we held a Sustrans litterpick on the North Edinburgh Path Network that route 1 is part of - 15 volunteers collected over SIXTY bags of litter and, in doing so, removed it from the habitat of song thrushes, blackbirds, wrens, goldcrests, robins, long-tailed tits and more. Of course, it's not just a problem there - on the canal towpath (route 75) the other month I noticed a nest with a pair of plastic scissors built into it. And in the course that I mentioned in my last blog, we watched the well-known David Attenborough video clip of Satin bowerbirds in Australia, decorating their bowers with bits of discarded blue plastic – drinking straws, bottle tops, plastic cutlery. We know that, all across the world, birds are increasingly affected by “anthropogenic debris” – that originating from human activity. I have added the picture of the scissors to the Birds & Debris website – it’s a Citizen Science project run by the University of the Highlands and Islands to try to better understand the effect of litter on bird species. So far there are 148 reports within the UK and 84 from other parts of the world, so I’ll remember to snap anything else I see and upload it – sadly I’m sure it won’t be long before I come across something else…it’s a rubbish situation, but we can all do a bit to help.

3rd Feb. Lovely walk with our friends Tamzin and Zora again. Paddled in 2 different streams (both different from the last post as well. Much potential for paddling at Walkmill!) Then we saw something mysterious on a handrail. Looked like intestines.. very clean though..some people have wondered slug eggs or a type of fungi.. We saw a large bird circling overhead later in the walk..could this bird be part of the mystery? Our bird identification skills are not fantastic so I plan to show the video we took of it to more knowledgeable people and see if we can solve this mystery.

During the stream depth measuring the skeleton of a sheep was discovered in the stream. After the stream had been explored the children moved onto the trees. A lot of the trees have fallen over here. It is quite dark and not the most welcoming area of Walkmill. The fallen trees were good for climbing on though. This area feels to have been an harvested part of the plantation that was cut down not so long ago, rather than the areas that were planted as part of the regeneration after mining finished. See the sign (obviously quite an old sign!) More to investigate around this I think!

26th Jan With Rosie at an extra theatre school rehearsal Jon and I went to Walkmill to explore from a different entrance with the 2 youngest Gruffarolls. We parked by Emmaus House residential home and walked along the old railway line to enter Walkmill. There is a bridge over a land drain type stream and a game of pooh sticks was initiated. Before long though it had evolved and Willow was in the water paddling and Rowan was on the bridge using the pooh sticks as drum sticks! We walked on and entered a patch of trees on the right of the path. At the bottom on this patch of trees is a bigger stream. The area next to this was felled not so long ago and is so different from when I first walked here. The children enjoyed measuring how deep the stream was with sticks. We had discovered a way to measure the rough height of trees and tried it out here but it was tricky as the trees were quite close together.. more of this another time!

Alongside my John Muir Award, I am doing some classroom-based learning to help me understand what I’m seeing – a short Bird Biology course at the University of Edinburgh. In the second session, the teacher handed us all name cards, with a drawing by her son of the favourite bird that each person had nominated the week before. Inside was a note saying she hoped that we would enjoy the course. I AM enjoying the course and taking my learning outside on the Network routes (was that bird call about food, predators, mobbing or contact…? is that bird species socially monogamous, or polygamous??) but I enjoyed the gift even more. The impact of this seemingly small gesture was immense; you could feel the surprise and joy spread across the room as each person received their card and admired their goldfinch, wren, budgie, crow and more. In a world that is increasingly speedy, selfish, and disconnected from nature, I thought about the time that she had taken to do this and to engage her child with noticing the details of, and drawing, around 20 species of birds. We all need to do that a bit more – slow down, connect, think of others. It’s now on my fridge as a reminder - my gannet for a better planet.

A few more pictures from our gardening experience.

We have some seed potatoes from 'Grow Your Own Potatoes' and have left them by the windowsill to chit. In the meantime, we have been clearing the growing bed ready for our vegetables and have found this to be hard work! We have learnt about safe handling of tools and the names of gardening equipment we need for this task - trowel, fork, wheelbarrow and compost bin. Over the next couple of weeks we will be clearing the area of weeds and putting all the remains in the compost bin to see what happens to it. We found all sorts of things in the raised bed including lovely juicy worms which we talked about and how they contribute to the food growing process.