Late Autumn or Early Winter?

I'm really not sure what season one should call this, whether we're still in late autumn even though the night-time temperatures are dropping below a ground-frosty 4C, or whether we're in the beginnings of winter, as suggested by the pink-footed geese which pass over, sometimes in skein after skein totalling hundreds of birds, several times each day.

The herons think it's winter as they now collect in the glebe whenever a high tide chases them off the shore, and....

....the curlews are here in numbers, their plaintive call so characteristic of winter beaches.

We have new residents which I'm hoping will stay with us, not one but two dippers working the Golspie Burn above the footbridge near our house.

The bumblebees continue to crowd the michaelmas daisies in their torpid dozens, each unwilling to move off 'their' flower even if one brushes against it. This morning, with the temperature struggling towards 7C, a few of them were on the white-harled walls around the house soaking up what warmth they could from a weak early sun.

Between occasional heavy showers there has been some sun during the last week or so, enough to bring out one or two of the bigger butterflies, though the only one I've managed to photograph was this very fine red admiral. This has been a terrible year for butterflies and I've hardly seen any caterpillars so can only hope that this good-looking specimen and some of his fellows make it through the winter months to breed prolifically next spring.

The berries are now almost ready for winter, a heavier crop on the rowans than I had expected and a fair crop of elderberries and blackberries.

Everyone is preparing for winter, either by migrating - the last of the swallows and martins seem to have gone - or by establishing their territories. This robin has staked out his amongst the sea buckthorn along the old coast track below Dunrobin Castle.