J-Dog
Posts: 4402 Joined: Dec. 2006
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[quote=Albatrossity2,Aug. 06 2008,16:50]Thankfully we saw no snakes while in Scotland. St. Columba must have driven them down to Brighton.The only herps we saw were frogs and toads aplenty. We did see several road-killed foxes, as well as bunnies. Other mammals included both roe and red deer. I wanted to see a badger, but I was disappointed in that desire. Maybe next time.
I have had time to only go through a small subset of the pics, but here are a few more. The first is Siccar Point, on the East Lothian coast just south of Dunbar (John Muir's birthplace). It is a remarkably beautiful site, well worth the trip. It is a bit hard to find, but having found it, I can now provide explicit directions for any who want to venture there. J-Dog, if you get to Edinburgh to visit your daughter this year, you ought to take her there. You can see what you need to see from the overlook (where this shot was taken). It is a steep (about 45-60 degree slope) grassy clamber down the 300 ft cliff. I clambered back up before Elizabeth. She wanted to look at more of the tide pools and I wanted to get back on to level ground (silly Kansan). You can spot her there just to the left of the leftmost tide pool; it's a long ways down. But on the right of the picture you can see the geology for which the site is famous - red sandstones overlaid on folded, uplifted and eroded gray sedimentary rocks. If that can happen in 6000 years, it truly would be a miracle!
We also visited a nature reserve in Kinross (on Loch Leven, north of Edinburgh), where I got these two pictures. Little Grebe (Tachybaptus ruficollis, aka Dabchick), which was a new bird for the life list, and Tufted Duck (Aythya fuligula), which I had previously seen in California, where they are regular vagrants (a few show up there every year).
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Finally, here is a Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) amongst the cow parsnips and Scottish thistle at ye old Rintoul estate a few miles west and north of Kinross. It consists of an abandoned 19th century house (two stories) and caved-in barn (complete with resident Barn Owl). My great-grandfather emigrated from this area of Scotland in 1849. It was quite interesting to visit the place from whence my family name originated...
Absolutely tremendous - and holy ID, that IS a long way down!
-------------- Come on Tough Guy, do the little dance of ID impotence you do so well. - Louis to Joe G 2/10
Gullibility is not a virtue - Quidam on Dembski's belief in the Bible Code Faith Healers & ID 7/08
UD is an Unnatural Douchemagnet. - richardthughes 7/11
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