Flowers of Scotland

One great thing about cooler temperature country is the variety of colorful flowers. In Scotland, there are beautiful wild flowers everywhere. And then there are the planted flowers in gardens and homes. We couldn't get enough of the flowers and visited 2 Botanic Garden - 1 in Glasgow and 1 in Edinburgh.

Here are just a few of the interesting looking flowers. For more of them, go to my Facebook album or Picasa Web Album.

Enjoy the nice flowers but don't ask me what are their names cause I sure don't know.

Edinburgh Zoo, Scotland

Our last main stop before we move over to London was to the Edinburgh Zoo. It seems we must make a pit stop at a zoo in every major place that we visit. There are quite of marine park and zoo in Scotland but Edinburgh is one of the bigger and better zoo in UK so we felt obliged to drop in.

Edinburgh Zoo is one of the few zoo in the world to have the Panda bear. But it is more famous for its Penguin Parade where the Penguin goes on a real march through the zoo, Unfortunately we were there at the wrong time so did not get to witness this spectacular sight.

But we did managed to catch the feeding of several of the animals like the Oriental Short Clawed Otter gobbling down the mouse.

And the Asiatic lion running away with a piece of meat.

We also saw up close the Amur Leopard

The very rare Scottish wild cat

And surprise surprise surprise the Koala bear. This is the first time I seen one outside of Australia.

And another import from another country, the Stellar Sea Eagle.

And last but not least, this beautiful snake aptly named Taiwan Beauty Snake.

But overall I was disappointed with the layout of the zoo. It was a bit messy and most of the primates were kept behind glass enclosures. Maybe it is to protect them from the cold but the view of them were spoilt by the glass which were badly scratched. The variety of animals were not as great as I had hopped as compared to say Ueno Zoo or the Shanghai Zoo. 

Isle of Mull, Scotland

One of the thing that we decided to do before we go over was to go on a "wildlife expedition" trip. So after some research, we signed up for one on the Isle of Mull, a place that is renown for its wildlife.

The trip to the Isle of Mull was an adventure by itself with beautiful scenery. We had to drive a long distance from Glasgow after which we had to take a ferry across. Along the way, there are the usual beautiful landscapes both on land and in the sea. Unfortunately, the Isle of Mull by itself is quite a boring place with nothing much to do if you are not into nature. 

This is Tobermory, the main town of Isle of Mull. It is also a "ghost" town after 6 pm when all the shops closes. 

We drove 20 miles to this place to find everything closed. Our consolation was that the only remaining place still opens for business happens to serve the best seafood in the whole of Scotland!  More of the food in another blog post later.

Back to the wildlife expedition. We were picked up at our hotel the next morning and driven around together with some other nature lovers to look for porpoise, eagles, otters and deer. We drove all over the Isle stopping at strategic spots where everybody will rush to bring out their super binoculars and telescope and long lens. We had brought along a binoculars but soon put it aside after realising that what we had was totally inadequate for the task it was supposed to perform! We found this out when everybody was going gaga over a sighting of porpoise in the sea. Me with my 200mm camera and M, with the binocular saw nothing! We put aside our gear and borrowed the spare binoculars from the guide. And the whole world changed!

Here we are staring out to sea. What did they see?

This was what I captured on my camera's 200mm lens.

See anything? How about this cropped photo?

Yes seal. They were just a speck in the sea and the guide saw them while driving and stopped so that everybody can get a "closer" look. Its amazing how he navigates the small narrow road and yet see birds and all sort of animals.

What do you think this people are looking at here?

Inland and up in the sky. What I saw was this

A beautiful sky. But there was something there. Like this eagle soaring high up in the sky. 

Oh pardon me, did you say what eagle? There, that speck in the middle of the photo just between the 2 trees in the middle of the photo. And to be honest, almost all the sightings of wildlife were like this. The animals and birds were far far away and only visible via the powerful binoculars and telescope. Like this sighting here for otter.

See the otters? No? Neither did I until I borrowed some of the more powerful binoculars and telescope.

And with the powerful equipment it was like we were up next to the animals and birds! No wonder these people got so excited every time they spot something. 

About the only animal we can spot with our naked eyes other than the cows and sheep were this pair of Red Deer. Unfortunately we were in the van and could not get down to watch them close up. 

But overall, while we were disappointed that we did not get to see the animals closed up like what we imagined in an African safari, we were happy that we still managed to spot almost all the animals that were present on the Isle of Mull, although abide from a long long distance. Still, it was a great experience for newbie birdwatcher like us. The guide from Isle of Mull Wildlife Expeditions, David was warm and friendly and very knowledgeable. We enjoyed ourselves very much despite it being a long long day and counted this as one of the highlight of the trip to Scotland!

More photos on FB here.

Loch Lomond, Scotland

The most famous place in Scotland is probable Loch Ness, home of the mythical Lock Ness Monster. Naturally that was on our must visit list until all the locals we spoke to told us not to waste our time travelling there. So in the end, instead of Loch Ness, we ended up at Loch Lomond.

Loch Lomond is the largest lake in mainland Britian - i.e. England and Scotland and is about 71 sq km in surface area. Certainly it was big cause we could see that it stretches on and on and even when we were driving up to the highlands, we keep passing signs pointing to Loch Lomond.

We decided that the earliest way to explore it is to take one of the short cruise. There are different cruises available including sunset dinner cruise but we had only time for short cruise. What we saw on this little cruises were beautiful houses along the river banks. Most of them have been converted to hotels and it seems celebrities from all over the world flock here to stay and escape from the crowd.

 

There was even an island which is Scotland's first naturist island! Unfortunately we didn't get to land there to take in the "sights" although I am sure with the bitter cold wind, there won't be any brave soul baring all on the other.

Anyway, there are plenty of other kind of birds, the real kind that is. Seagull, ducks are in abundance flying all over the place.

But what really got M excited was the first sighting of black berries! And there were plenty of them growing wild all over the places. 

 

At Balloch, the part of Loch Lomond that we were at, there was a small Bird of Prey Centre and naturally we had to go in and see and we got up close to many beautiful owls and eagles. More photos will be posted up on my Facebook Check it out there..

We also discovered an automated toilet.

Visitor has to put in the correct fee and the door will open.....and the toilet cleans by itself. How about that!

From Loch Lomond, we moved on to our first castle......

So this is Scotland

Been away to Scotland for a holiday. Really beautiful places. Here are some teaser photos of some of the places we visited. Not your typical tourist places though. Anybody wanna guess where these places are?

Review of the places, the food and the country coming up in the next few blog posts here and here.

MacRitchie Reservoir

I go to MacRitchie Reservoir pretty often. Most times to run. Very rarely for any other things. During a run, it is pretty difficult to spot anything except maybe the monkeys or occasional monitor lizards. Some people have spotted snakes but while I seen them, this was not during a run but a hike.

Recently I went with a group of students for a hike to the Tree Top Walk. And because we were not running, we spotted so many things that I never noticed in my run.

Like this patch of beautiful Tiger Orchids just outside the ranger station. Now I stopped at the Ranger Station on almost every run for the past 6 years and I swear I never knew there was a big clump of Tiger Orchids growing just outside it. 

Then there is this little mushroom on the floor. It was covered by the fallen leaves and a Nparks officer showed it to us. Apparently it can eject a puff of powder if disturbed hence it is called the powder puff mushroom.

And everybody who been to MacRitchie is familiar with the long tailed macaques or monkeys as we called them. Unfortunately most of the sightings are either of them around the Amenities Centre scrounging for human food or chasing visitors for more human food. But how often have we seen them in their natural habitat in the trees or eating fruits like what we saw when we on the tree top trail?

Last but not least, how many people have seen a flying fox in MacRitchie? This one we saw was so near I could almost touch it.

Isn't these sightings good enough reasons for us to slow down and smell the flowers and look at the rich wildlife that abounds in MacRitchie.