Christmas in Scotland

What I didn't see, or photograph! (RF - NPS Photo)

Straight after Christmas in Scotland with the family, I visited an old friend in Kirriemuir, north of Dundee. At the RSPB’s fine reserve of Loch of Kinnordy, we narrowly missed four Otters swimming past the hide, and one eating a pike - one of those ‘you should have been here an hour ago’ stories! We learnt that the local Greylags have learnt to be very wary of one Otter, which specializes in hunting them as they swim.  However, our luck changed. Two hours later, in Glen Clova, we saw a Stoat in Ermine, the white coat which Stoats in the Highlands assume to blend in with the snow. During the unusually mild weather, the only snow was way up on the tops, making our roadside Stoat very conspicuous. I clearly saw the black tip to the tail to prove it wasn’t a hallucination.