They're here....

Every year, about this time, Bass Rock goes white when all the gannets arrive from their winter break. Here's one of the webcams, if you're interested. Today I tried some street shots - of strangers - for the first time, but they were all rubbish, so you'll have to make do with an over-photoshopped rock.

Watched a fascinating programme tonight about colony collapse syndrome (where all your bees die). Kind of scary really, especially since no-one really knows why it happens (theories include: pesticides, mites, stress of long-distance travel). Until we first started reading about this a few years ago, I thought bees were just about honey, but actually they pollinate most of the plants we grow and are particularly critical for monoculture. In monoculture the pollinators only have food for the few weeks of the year that that single crop is in flower - so the only viable way to pollinate is to ship in hundreds of hives of bees. Of course the movie 'Bee Story' has helped a whole generation of children understand the importance of bees...

Anyway, I didn't mean to go on and on about bees, that was really just to explain why I was glued to the telly last night instead of uploading this, hence it's being uploaded today (which is tomorrow, if you see what I mean).