Frozen Canal

Large parts of the Union Canal are frozen solid enough to walk on and cycle on. Official advice is don't walk on it, but there are places where it is very thickly iced and you can walk on it safely as long as you keep away from under the bridges where the ice thins. There's something surreal about walking down the middle of what should be a flowing canal! It was heartening to see too that we're not the only people leaving food out for the birds, there were scatterings of seeds and other goodies along the edges of paths, on walls etc as well as some well stocked bird feeding stations in gardens. We saw a bullfinch, a redwing, a fieldfare, lots of house sparrows (the canal is one of the Edinburgh strongholds for this species, which is declining rapidly across the country), blue tits, robins and blackbirds, Also some forlorn looking swans, mallards and moorhens (see photos below, both taken by Crafty Green Boyfriend). One of the moorhens was bizarrely sitting in a tree!