The water on the edge of Aberlady Bay had frozen in several places with thick ice beside the footbridge at the approach to the nature reserve.  Throughout the area there are many large swathes of frozen water where normally there is no water and the sheep which graze there during the winter were having to negotiate deep water.  Even on the sand below the high water mark the shallow water was icy.  It was a beautiful sunny day with hardly a breath of wind and good to get out to see and hear the birds and wonder at the thousands of creatures that were resting or hibernating unseen in the undergrowth.