"Scottish Snippets"

"Colour Supplement"

7 January 2006

Each week the Scottish Snippets Newsletter includes a number of photographs which illustrate the weather, flora and fauna of the current week around Scotland. There are so many such graphics worth including that a separate "colour supplement" is created so as not to totally overload the Newsletter. Here is this week's crop!

Sunset, Drumpellier Country Park

Perhaps the first colour supplement of the New Year should start with a picture of dawn on a frosty morning - but here's one of a sunset on a frosty evening instead! While there have been a number of dull, overcast days, there has also been some bright, sunny weather - as in this picture taken at Drumpellier Country Park in North Lanarkshire.

Gulls on Ice

The cold weather and clear skies have resulted in the water in smaller lochs and ponds freezing over. This wintry scene in the late afternoon at Hogganfield Loch on the outskirts of Glasgow, shows some of the local bird population coping with that. Who can blame some of the geese for standing on one leg on the ice, to cut down on the heat loss?

Greylag Goose

Fortunately, the weather has not been severe enough to freeze all the water - this Greylag goose may have been eating the grass in farmers' fields earlier in the day and has arrived back at Hogganfield Loch in the late afternoon to roost in the relative safety there overnight.

Siskin

Cold weather often brings birds in from the countryside to share in the food put out in many suburban gardens. This was certainly the first time that I had seen Siskins in my own garden.

Goldeneye

Goldeneye are not as numerous as many of the other wildfowl overwintering in central Scotland. They are much shyer than many of the other birds and are reluctant to come in close to the bank to share in the bread with which many people feed the large population of mallards, geese, coots and swans.

Chaffinch

This may be a young chaffinch with its feathers fluffed up against the cold weather, but looking at its rotund form, I wondered whether it had been enjoying too much Christmas lunch of seeds and nuts?

If you want to look back at earlier editions of this Colour Supplement, there is an Index Page



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