First Hard Frost

The warm colours of this morning's sunrise over the Moray Firth, seen between our neighbours' roofs, were are odds with the temperature in the back garden - just below zero - and the ice on the bird baths. So our walk this morning....

.... along an ice-hardened coast path to the north of Golspie, was a careful one. The anvil cloud out over an almost glassy sea looked like a summer thundercloud but will probably shortly be dumping snow along the Aberdeenshire and Moray coasts.

The wildlife, with the exception of the rock doves, a few cormorants, a single curlew, and the usual crows and gulls, had taken cover but we did see, feeding on orange sea buckthorn berries, a flock of twenty or more fieldfares, probably recent immigrants from Scandinavia brought down by the northerly winds.

As we made our way gently home the high cloud pulled away allowing the sun to come out. It isn't just that the sun is always a welcome, cheering sight but also that, shining into our triple-glazed, southeast-facing sun room, it warms the room in no time.