Weekend Walk - Birds

We walked along the Water of Leith this morning. The weather was lovely, cold but with bright blue skies and no wind. The slopes by the paths were often covered with snowdrops and there were lots of rich mosses on the walls. It was a good day for birdwatching, we saw a pair of goosanders, which seem improbably grand for a small river in the middle of a city. Further along we got very close to two dippers, I was hoping to see some courtship behaviour but each bird stayed firmly on its own rock and groomed. It was lovely to get so close to a bird that often is nothing more than a blur as it speeds along the river! We also saw long tailed tits almost dancing in the branches above us.