Snow returns to the Highlands

Snow falling over Guisachan Farm today

Alders along a river above Hilton Lodge

 Will it stay or will it thaw again. I'm hoping for the right survey conditions.

Buzzard, Roe Deer, Hooded Crows and Jays at remote camera in Dec 2011

This is a video composite of activity at the remote camera referred to in the last two posts.
The time and date settings are not correctly set so please ignore them.

Rain, snow and a lot of water - Happy new year

My recollection of 2011 is going to be rain, snow, ice, mud and a lot of water. While the south of the UK has been worrying about drought, this part of the country has been suffering from a significant lack of sunshine.

Unlike the last two winters, which went straight to snow for long periods, this year the snow came a little earlier, stayed for a couple of weeks and now we're back to guess what. RAIN!

Still, at least the days are getting longer now. Happy new year.

More from the snowy north

Weather turned again on the weekend and went from no snow to over 30cm by Sunday morning. I think we must have had about 60cm overall but with the ground warmer it was thawing all the time.

Still snow on the ground today but it's going fast.

I moved the trail camera from the Badger Sett on Friday night and set it up on a Deer trail where it stayed until Sunday. The camera was over where the trail crossed a stream in a steep sided ravine and being about half way down, I had to struggle a bit to retrieve it. Didn't capture any Deer but the clip below shows an interesting transition back into winter.

I've been doing some more tests with the Prostalk PC2000 in preparation for writing a review which should appear in a couple of days or so, and tomorrow it returns to the Badger Sett to continue monitoring their activity patterns. We're fast approaching another full moon and with the nights getting shorter I'm interested to see if their evening emergence is getting any closer to dusk.

A hell of a year in paradise

I don't know why but every time I move home it seems to trigger a period of snow. It's exactly a year since I moved to Culbokie Cottage and now I've just moved a mile down the road by the village; and each time winter hase arrived with a vengeance. Happily, this time I'm by the tarmac and can get in and out, just!

Now I've got a telephone and internet access, so there's no excuse for not replying to emails and keeping the blog up to date.

I'm making a few changes to the way I do stuff online, most notably the website is going and all the prints for sale will now be available from Wildlife and Countryside Services . I'll now be using most of my time to continue with the Red Squirrel Survey and Photography; and I'll be posting regularly here and on the Red Squirrels of the Highlands  website, among others for which I'll provide links as they happen.

I managed to get a reasonable amount of survey work done this last Autumn and I've just started to experiment with tracking in the snow to build up a better idea of distribution in a typical forest plantation nearby. It will be interesting to see how the results tie in with the autumn survey.