First Birds of the Year!

Every New Year's Day, we have a wee wander around Edinburgh, taking in the Meadows and Arthur's Seat, to see how many birds we can see! Yesterday we saw 28 species! Here are some of the highlights of the walk and birds. 

We walked along part of the Union Canal then through the Meadows where we met this cheeky Grey Squirrel 

There were good numbers of Redwings around too, the Meadows is always a good place to see a few of these winter thrushes 

We also saw this beautiful white pigeon

 

We next popped into East Preston Street Cemetery, where there is a nice view of Arthur's Seat. (The tower on the left of the photo below is a watchtower, where in the distant past, night watchmen would keep an eye on the cemetery to watch out for grave robbers.)

 We looked around the cemetery for ladybirds and, though we didn't find many, we were happy to see this little group of hibernating Pine Ladybirds

The light was beautiful as we walked round Arthur's Seat 

Among the birds we saw on St Margaret's Loch at the foot of Arthur's Seat was this unexpected Goldeneye! It even performed a little courtship dance for us, despite there being no female Goldeneyes in sight!

Here's the complete list of birds we saw yesterday, in the order we saw them: 

Magpie, Woodpigeon; Blue Tit; Blackbird; Moorhen; Black Headed Gull; Goosander; Mallard; Feral Pigeon; Bullfinch; Jackdaw; Carrion Crow; Redwing; Goldfinch; Starling; Pied Wagtail; House Sparrow; Herring Gull; Kestrel; Siskin; Tufted Duck; Dunnock; Wren; Mute Swan; Robin; Greylag Goose; Goldeneye; Common Gull.