Extra special

Special: We went for another beaver watch this morning. Everywhere was white with frost and much of the loch was frozen over. We didn’t hold out much hope - at least, not in public! I was secretly hoping one might be munching in the borders. We waited. And watched. And waited. The two ducks made their usual fake beaver appearance. Then nothing. We whispered about leaving. And then it happened. 

A noise in the reeds. Out swam a beaver. It was less than twenty metres away! It swam back in again and we quietly stood up and listened in its direction.

Munch. Munch. Munch.

It was in the darkest part of the reeds so even with my ISO ramped and manual focusing, it was too hard for anything but a record. A record it is though (extra). 

We were home by nine. I had a snooze because we were up again at 4am with a little emergency of the old dog kind. But then we whiled away the afternoon on the decking in the sunshine, looking out to the flat calm sea. 

Extra special: As well as the usual suspects, the lack of waves made it easy to spot at least four porpoises cruising around in front of us (extra maybe?)

Finally, with an hour of light left we went out for a walk up to the Dunadd fortress and caught it in stunning golden light with the top to ourselves.