Evening walk

We had a lovely evening walk yesterday along the Union Canal.

The ox eye daisies by the steps up to the canal are wonderful

while by the canal path, the edge of the verge has been mown to allow walkers to move aside to let cyclists pass and the rest is left wild, and is currently full of wildflowers including these tufted vetch (the purple flowers) and the meadow vetchling (the yellow flowers, though i may be wrong with this id, yellow vetches are particularly tricky to identify, i always find).

We met these young mallards, all sleeping in a pile,being watched over

We were less than happy to find that although Edinburgh Council sometimes gets it right with roadside, pathside and canalside verges (see the first two photos here and this post from yesterday) sometimes they get it horribly wrong, as with this pathside verge between the canal and a local park.

So we were quite sad as we walked home but then we saw this lovely sunset

The charity Plantlife is currently campaigning for local authorities in the Uk to manage roadside and other verges better for wildlife. You can find out more here.