Sunshine, Bees, and Snail

We woke to find ourselves back in winter, with snow - or something like it - forming a thin icing on Ben Hiant and extending down to the 200m contour line, but the falls must have been very localised as the hills on Mull didn't seem to have caught it.

During the morning the sun came out and, with a much lighter northeasterly wind, we enjoyed a warmer day than yesterday, warm enough for the bumblebees to be out foraging on the berberis - this one also carrying bee mites though in much smaller quantities than Les Humphreys recorded the other day - here.

The sun was out, the bees were busy in the spring flowers - and then it 'snailed', a black cloud heaving suddenly over the hill behind us and peppering us with something which, while it looked like snow, had formed into hail-like balls.