Heron

We went up town in the morning to collect a visiting blipper and his wife to give them a tour of Leith, which we were concerned might be a bit of an anti-climax after their trip to the Bass Rock yesterday organised by cameron. However, apart from assorted vistas and venerable buildings we managed to find a reasonable selection of birdlife to show to a couple of such keen birders and the rain held off, mostly.

There were lots of eider ducks ushering large collections of ducklings about and we saw the Water of Leith swans with their seven cygnets for the first time. There was a moorhen on a nest in the river with three tiny red beaks occasionally poking out from beneath her chest. But I liked best this young heron who was stalking along beside the bank really close to us.

Then we took John and Marylee to the Vaults where we enjoyed some lunch and more conversation - then just as we were leaving and John had taken out his little camera to take a photo we were hailed by someone sitting at the adjoining table "Excuse me, but you're behaving like blippers"!! It turned out to be Louise, to whose journal I've been subscribed for even longer than John's, but whom I'd never met either. What a lovely surprise; although I suspect that John and Marylee will have gone away with the idea that blippers bump into each other all the time in Leith!