Feeding missing friends on my New Year's Day walk in Scotland

Hello Hello Hivians and Happy New Year.

Yes 2023 is now finally here, and today is the first Wednesday of this new year. Which means that it is time to share my first walk of the year.

Hopefully what they see will put a smile on the faces of @coquicoin @lhes and @ayane-chan as those wonderful ladies do ask about we are about to see!

New Year's Day Walk

Yes this was around noon on Sunday the first that we went out for a walk up to our local park.

As you can the weather was absolutely gorgeous, yes we do get blue skies in Scotland from time to time even in the winter!

This is our rose garden, apart from the lack of roses can you see anything in particular?

Let's go have a closer look...

We had been having plenty of rain! You can see the pruned roses were having their very own bedbath!

I knew the ground would be wet, so there was method in my madness.

No zipping over the grass, no siree, it was a case of sticking to the paths!

Blue skies and the winter sun does make for some cracking shadows, and I did take some shadow shots for a future shadow hunters post. This rose garden structure did provide some awesome shadows especially on the beech hedge.

Now where we heading to?

Ah yes of course, to feed some pies!

The only problem is that I did not see either of them, so back the food went into my bag.

Fluffed if I was just going to feed the bloody seagulls!

The pies are the cutiepies and baby swans from a family I have been following and feeding since early 2021.

This was them in June 2021!

Mr and Mrs Swan Susie and Stevie for some reason last year decided to leave the Park and move to the nearby Raith lake.

I think it was the return of people, they pretty much had the run of the park and pond during Covid. Since lockdown was lifted they and four of the children have made Raith Lake their home, which is about 2 or 3 miles away.

However two of the pies stayed here, one of the boys and one of the girls. Blueberry and MudPie are the ones who remained.

First up though were some other children.

These might appear as Mallard ducks at first sight.

However, they are noisier and bigger than Mallards.
Last year, some of you might remember Dafty the Pomeranian Duck who wrote the book on womanizing!

Well I think these ducks are the product of his canoodling with Milly and Molly the female Mallard ducks on Love Island.

They are not as white as your ducks @ayane-chan maybe that is because with Dafty as their father, they are doomed to be womanizers too, and not as pure as yours🤣

There we go, finally I spotted Mudpie way round on the other side of the pond at the boating hut. Turned out that someone had thrown some food for him on the ground.

He is really turning into a handsome big swan now. He is getting a thick strong neck which is good. He is also not the timid cygnet anymore, you can see his wings are in don't fluffing mess with me mode.

Now this was a male Mallard, and the cheeky chappy was coming to see what I was up to!

Just want to flex my toy now! Can you see something in the picture above.... Look closely whilst I zoom in...

Can you see it now?

The moon. I mean how cool was that to see it in the middle of the afternoon.

I feel it in my bones, 2023 will be better year!

Some of you will know this and some of you won't...

To aid digestion, when swans eat their food, they doit whilst taking a drink of water.

Do you see how he takes the pellets and drops them into the water to eat from the water so as to get some water at the same time.

I did have a wee chat with him, and asked about his sister. They had not fallen out, but were having some space he told me!

Meanwhile the clouds were giving us a warning!

We left him to deal with the pesky gulls and went to look for his sister BlueberryPie..

Past the outdoor adult fitness exercise equipment we went, I swear I will use it properly one day!

It looked like Mudpie had sorted the gulls out! From the looks of it he was shaking this one! A little moorhen was giving him moral encouragement🤣

And then we saw blueberry pie right at the far end of the pond.

Truth be told, I was quite worried that I had not seen her. So was extremely chuffed when she was spotted.

They might be wild swans, but they do tug at your heart if something happens to them.