Happy New Year!

It's an Edinburgh tradition to visit Arthur's Seat on New Year's Day which is what we did today.

We don't go to the top of the hill, as it is one of those horribly steep peaks that gives me really bad vertigo, plus at this time of year there are too many people up there so we kept to the valley where there were far fewer people.

One of our own New year's day traditions is to make a list of all the birds we see, as a start to the year list we keep. We're not competitive about this and just shrug our shoulders when extremely serious birders laugh at  how relatively few birds we see over the course of the year. We did have a good start, seeing 28 species today including in our own street, during our walk across Edinburgh and round Arthur's Seat. Crafty Green Boyfriend took these lovely photos

 goosander on the Union Canal - female above, male below

treecreeper in the Meadows area

male tufted duck, on one of the lochs on Arthur's Seat