Water Rail and other birds!

 

I found out via Birding Lothian that a water rail had been seen over the past few days on the pond in Inverleith Park. So I wandered over there this morning to check it out. Water rails are notoriously elusive birds, the only time before today that I'd seen one, I'd only had a brief glimpse as it disappeared into the reeds. I hoped for a better view today and I wasn't disappointed! The water rail is a beautiful bird and this one was happy to show itself on the clear water, or should I say the clear ice. It was moving quickly most of the time though so was very difficult to capture on camera, though I did try. 

I've added this sighting to my list of birds for the year, which you can see here.

There were lots of other birds about too, this mute swan was skating over the ice

while this one was asleep on the ice

and these two coots were preening

Inverleith Park is proving an excellent place to see redwings this year, and today was no exception, there were about 15 flying round in the trees and running across the grass.

Later I saw two mistle thrushes in the grounds of the cathedral and a robin was eating literally at my feet while I was watching the thrushes.

For Nature Notes

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As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other pages where you can find out more.