First Frost

I think the western end of Ormsaigbeg had half a dozen nights last winter when the temperature dropped below zero. Last night we had this winter's first frost, albeit a light one, as Jack Frost was selective about where he touched. Rime crystallised on tufts of grass growing in the middle of the road, formed as a thin crust in dark nooks under the bracken, and laid a coat across occasional paving stones to catch the unwary; and there was half a centimetre of ice on the surface of a bucket of water in the vegetable garden.

With hardly a breath of wind Kilchoan Bay mirrored a pale sunrise. By the time we walked down to the shop this heron, sitting on a rock just off the end of the jetty, had obviously already enjoyed a good breakfast. Judging by their numbers, herons like this coastline. They're antisocial birds when they're hunting, engaging in ungainly aerial combat as one sees another off his patch. Yet in the late autumn the Bay will see great flights of them, fifteen or twenty at a time. Perhaps its their equivalent of a ceilidh, when the younger herons gather to pair off.