Birds on Arthurs Seat and the Crags

We had a lovely walk round Arthur's Seat today.
 

We enjoyed watching the jackdaws, this couple were collecting nesting material

while this one seemed to have already found a nesting site

 several pairs nest in the holes in this wall by the side of the road every year, Crafty Green Boyfriend caught these two leaving their nest hole

The herons already have their nests built, you can see them in the trees on the island in Duddingston loch, another photo from Crafty Green Boyfriend whose camera has a better zoom than mine!

I took this photo, which shows the island in the overall context of the loch 

 
Crafty Green Boyfriend also took this photo of a greenfinch, we were surprised by how many of these lovely little birds we saw today, they are generally declining in number and not usually very common, but we guessed we saw about 5 or 6 today

Crafty Green Boyfriend also caught this lovely chaffinch on camera

We also saw a couple of pairs of fulmars nesting in the cliffs of Salisbury crags, one of their few inland nesting colonies. The colony here is sadly a lot smaller than it used to be and neither of us could get photos of the birds.

There were some beautiful lichens on some of the trees, I particularly like this one, which clearly shows the round fruiting bodies in the yellowe lichen (and I've given up trying to identify lichens for now!)

The whole area round Arthurs Seat and the Crags is very beautiful, here are some more of my photos

***
One of the prompts for NaPoWriMo today was to take a piece of jargonistic, official writing and transform it into something more poetic. So I'm thinking of doing this with the manifesto of one of the Scottish conservation organisations, but so far have not been enough inspired by the text to produce anything resembling poetry! I did write two poems yesterday though so I am on target!