SUNSHINE, DRIFTING, MOUNTAIN HARES, FAB SNOW

Fabulous snow

Great day for wildlife photography

Beautiful light for a beautiful creature

Brilliant consolidated and untrodden snow cover above 700m

Main Cairngorm under cloud

Frozen bog, joy!

First up today

Beautiful

Double alert!

Settling down

Hare amongst the spindrift

So nice to be walking in blue skies and sunshine today. High pressure slowly drifting over the Highlands but the big Cairngorm Mountains were still plagued by cloud. So Karen and I decided on a lower level mountain, over on the Monadhliath. Very different weather on the west side of the A9. It's also a lot quieter at the weekend, we saw just two other folk in the distance. The older snow has gone through a melt/freeze cycle and superb walking on this. Any boggy ground lower down was frozen solid. Plenty of wonderful, light drifting in the stiff winds. For the first time in a long while the winds had swung from a Southerly, round to a Westerly. The Mountain Hares were looking absolutely wonderful in the bright sunlight. They were sheltering from the winds on the eastern aspects so we weaved around the hill to photograph these beautiful creatures. Watching them in the snow, spindrift and bright sunlight you could see this was their natural environment. We can visit but only these guys can tough it out in the most severe of winter conditions.
Looking like tomorrow is the finest day of the weekend. Lighter winds and more sun. Enjoy.