Watch The Birdie

 

We love our birds and keep them in food all the year around.  Right now the goldfinches are away, but the blackbirds have returned to their winter quarters.  Because the normally reliable crab apple crop was so poor this year we have supplemented their supply with apples and more recently pears (which they love!).  The sparrows have been muted in the cold snap but there are always pigeons, jackdaws and magpies who swing by to mop up the day's supply.  Another bird that has got wise to the congregation js this sparrowhawk.  Just the other day a pigeon was taken and dismembered in our garden leaving feathers al over the place.  Nature in claw and beak!

Edinburgh Topography

 

A New Years walk along the Fife Coastal Path offered this perspective on our home town of Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth.

To the left is Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano that looks like a recumbent lion. Next to that are "The Salisbury Crags"  This escarpment was quarried for building material for neighbouring  Holyrood Palace in the 1300s. Quarrying continued until .banned by Act of Parliament 1831..

The next feature is Edinburgh Castle, only visible because of the weather conditions, highlighting it in front of the Pentland Hill massing to the right of the picture. The Castle sits atop a volcanic plug.  When the ice sheet moved across this landscape from right to left the volcanic plug persisted and left a ridge a mile long tailing off behind it: the High  Street or Royal Mile, as can be seen from this vantage point.

I have since come across a reverse view I took recently.  In this case Fife is across the water in the distance.  The Royal Mile from Castle to Holyrood is the backbone of Edinburgh Old Town.