December 2023

My most pressing concern during the early part of December was where to spent Christmas! The previous two years had been with my brother and friends on Mull, but now I'm over 700 miles away from him (he's in Cornwall and I'm in Inverness), and he had admitted that he was going to be busy with work throughout the festive period. It's a long way to go at the best of times, but without much chance of seeing him, it wasn't worth considering.

Then my sister kindly offered to put me up (or put up with me, perhaps?) for the festive period, and I was off south, to catch up with her and her husband, my oldest brother and friends.

Aside from such minor issues, I spent December revisiting some of the wonderful locations I have close to home in the Highlands, and with snow on the higher ground, I found myself over on some moors one afternoon. It was like someone had carpeted everything with snow, and the light was stunning.

As I was heading home, I noticed the setting sun was casting its last rays across the moors, and managed to find a red grouse perched in just the right place for a shot. And better still, as I was taking the images, he took flight, and I captured a sequence of it flying over the snow, with the orange hues of the sunset and hills beyond.