Twenty-four Hours

This is a time of year for some highly changeable weather, well illustrated by the last twenty-four hours.  By and large, we've been going through a spell of unusually fine weather, sometimes cold - we've even had frost at night - but with spells of clear sky and warm sunshine.  This was the view across Kilchoan Bay towards Ben Hiant late yesterday afternoon.

Some of the deciduous trees have already lost all their leaves, some are still surprisingly green.  The trees along the side of the drive leading up to Meall mo Chridhe seem to have shed their leaves all at once, when the wind was in the west.

The weather broke last night after the wind moved round into the southeast and strengthened to force 5.  We're now forecast for a run of three days of pure Kilchoan sunshine.

This toad, remarkably well camouflaged against the tarmac, obviously knew that a change was on the way as we almost trod on him crossing the road yesterday afternoon.  Common toads begin their hibernation at about this time, reappearing in March, so presumably he was hurrying to his favourite pile of leaf litter.

At about the same time, the local flock of starlings was performing synchronised aerial displays above the Ferry Stores, then landed on the chimney of Shore Cottage.  Unable to hide under piles of leaves, they have every reason for packing themselves together as tightly as possible both in the air and on the ground: the local sparrow hawk continues to be very active and will continue to harry them right through the winter.

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On a different topic, AuroraWatch alerts continue to come in.  A completely different view of an aurora can be seen on the NASA website today. The Space Agency does a Picture of the Day which is well worth following, and today's features the recent auroral activity - it's here.