Autumnal rainbows and odd looking birds

The weather has been very changeable today but I got the best of it when I was out at Musselburgh. I was greeted by a lovely rainbow (that was much brighter in real life than it looks in the photo!).

There are still lots of wonderful colours around in the foliage and fruits too, it's been a much brighter November than usual

willow tree

rose bush on the bank of the River Esk

 

There were some odd looking birds around on the river today, including the goose on the left in this photo

 

The goose on the right is a Canada goose and the one on the left is its offspring from a mating with a greylag goose. These two species seem to interbreed quite frequently, I remember once a couple of years ago seeing a family of one proud Canadian goose parent, one proud greylag goose parent and five odd looking youngsters, sadly that was on a day I didn't have my camera with me!

This odd looking duck was also hanging around

 

This is, to use the very technical term, a manky mallard, which is a cross between a wild mallard and one of the domesticated breeds of mallard. Mallards are well known for interbreeding with other species of duck too, but there are so many domesticated breeds that there is a huge variation on patterns in the species as a whole already. You can see lots of different types of manky mallards in this article on the 10,000 birds website.