Birding in Musselburgh

Musselburgh is a small town just outside Edinburgh, with a lovely river and beach. We were walking round there today, the weather was pleasant though very windy, and we were impressed with the birds we saw!

On the river - several wigeon, these are very beautiful ducks and though I've seen them before I've never had such a good look at them, I particularly like the males' red and yellow head and pink front. Several goldeneye, very impressive ducks, who were splashing around a lot today. Several mallards, a few swans, greylag geese and canada geese. Two grey wagtails (much prettier than their name suggests) and a pied wagtail. A cormorant. Three goosanders.

On the beach - lots of redshanks, oystercatchers, a few turnstones. A small flock of bar tailed godwits (I assume they were bar tailed, though I can't actually tell the difference between those and the black tailed godwits which are much rarer). A sizeable flock of nondescript waders that I guess were dunlin, though they may have been knots (which are very similar in their winter plumage) waders aren't really my strong point!). Four or five eider ducks on the sea.

Lovely to see all these birds, very sobering to see from the RSPB pages that I link to, how many of these species are Amber status, which means they are threatened in some way or actually declining in number.