Courting trouble

The Scotsman headline - 'Day 1 of Edinburgh Zoo panda mating ends in anti-climax'. Nothing like a double entendre to get the day started.

Yes, it seems the pandas at Edinburgh Zoo have a 36 hour window in which to mate, given the female is now in heat and only ovulates once a year. Fascinating. Really it is!

It got me thinking about other species and their biological clocks. How come the ones you think of as 'pests' always manage to reproduce no problem at all, yet the more cute, adorable or magnificent the animal is, the more problematic either the mating or raising offspring is. Nature is a funny thing.

These 'pests' caught my eye while walking through the park this morning. Apparently not quite mating season yet for gulls but they could just be sizing each other up in the run up to the big event.

After my morning walk, I headed to the shop to buy some wine for the weekend (an Easter tradition, right?) only to be stood at a cordoned off isle of booze. The look of shock and horror on my face must have been apparent as a shop attendant appeared and said 'It's ok, it's only cordoned off until 10am - Scottish Licencing Laws.'. Phew! I hung around for 30 minutes (got a coffee and read a paper - what a bonus) and was ready, trolley wheels smoking, to do the mad dash down wine alley come 10am. 6 bottles of Chablis bagged = one happy lady.