Winter Sunshine and lots of Birds at Musselburgh

 We had a lovely walk at Musselburgh yesterday, walking along the River Esk to the Firth and Forth and then continuing on to the bird hides at Levenhall Links. The sun was shining, though it was very cold. 

We saw lots of birds, as one does along this route at this time of year! Highlights include: 

Long Tailed Duck, we saw six of these sea ducks, the females don't have tails

Lapwings - we saw about 50 of these beautiful birds that are sadly declining in number across the UK

Bar Tailed Godwit (to the left in the photo below) and Oystercatcher (to the right) were both present in good numbers along the shore 

Turnstones were running around on the rocky shore 

and there were a lot of Goldeneyes (the photo below shows a male)

and here's a female Goldeneye 

Musselburgh is always a great place to go birding. There are plans to build flood prevention structures along the River Esk and birders (and others) are concerned about the negative impact these works will have on nature. Of course, the town needs to be protected from rising sea levels, but the proposed plans seem pretty extreme. You can read about the flood prevention scheme here. You may be interested in Pause the Flood Scheme, which aims to find a responsible, nature based approach to flood prevention for the town.