Reflecting on Birds

It was a beautiful day at Musselburgh today, wonderful light for birdwatching. There were lots of birds around too! I was delighted to see 18 grey partridges at the Lagoons, this is well more than I've ever seen before and from talking to other people it sounds like it's well more than most people have seen in recent years. I also saw ruff, snipe, teal, wigeon, dunlin, golden plover, lapwing, curlew and a rook that seemed to be harrassing the other birds. Apart from the partridges there weren't high numbers of any of the birds but a lovely selection. Over the sea wall I got a distant view of a surf scoter hanging out with a group of velvet scoter.

I didn't take photos of any of these birds as they were too far away, but this carrion crow was more obliging. It's eating a fish that seemed to be still alive!

These Canada Geese by the River Esk were hilarious to listen to, they were making a lovely soft honking noise but also they were making a lot of noise as they were pulling at the grass and eating it.

And this mute swan just demanded to be photographed on the Boating Pond, where there are currently a lot of little grebes and today also another species of grebe, I'm not sure which species it was though (the grebes aren't in the photo)

For Weekend Reflections
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