Urban safari

It's great going out for a short walk in the city and looking for wildlife, even if my camera isn't always quite up to the job of taking the best photographs. This afternoon it was cold - the temperature was struggling to get much above freezing - so it wasn't a long walk. There were a lot of mallards around the weir on the Water of Leith in The Cauldron beneath the Gallery of Modern Art, but the trio of Goosanders were a little more interesting. I was watching them through the camera when there was a flash of blue. A kingfisher. More in hope than expectation I walked a little further along the riverbank and was delighted to see it had stopped to rest on a convenient perch above the water. I'm guessing the pole has been attached to the garden wall to allow for a bit of canoeing practise by setting up a competition style gate, but it might instead be a deliberate kingfisher pole. Some people put up strings of peanuts in their gardens to attract birds, so why not a fishing perch to attract a kingfisher? After a while, having got the best picture I could manage (I need a longer/faster lens!), the kingfisher moved on to another perch where it stayed for a bit and then flew off up river. The pair of swans glided by serenely, as swans usually do, and then just as I was about to head away from the riverbank at Roseburn, I saw a Dipper moving around on the far bank. The bird's white bib standing out brightly in the gathering gloom.