Unfortunately, being busy has also coincided with some of the most beautiful weather we have ever seen here. Autumn, winter and (to a lesser extent) spring were terribly wet last year, and although the summer was surpassingly lovely, we did have the midgies to content with. But over the last few days we have had the sort of autumn weather you could kill for, crisp, clear and perfect weather for walking. It was pretty sad yesterday to only have an hour’s walk and then have to get back to work.

I did get a few nice pictures though – a couple from home in the morning and then some as the sun was setting. The loch was beautiful when we had our walk at lunchtime, but unfortunately the sun was shining right towards us so not good for photography.

Firstly – we finally saw our friend the pine marten in the flesh for the first time. He seems to have been visiting the feeder much earlier – around 9pm rather than 2am, and last night I just glanced out of the window and there he was – this time munching away at the nuts I had put on the ground for the badger. Very luckily my mum was here and not only got her first view of a badger, but saw this as well.

He (or perhaps she) was smaller than he looks in the videos, and this, plus the different times he is turning up at, leads me to suspect that this may be a different marten to the one who eats from the feeder. Perhaps because he was on another (larger!) marten’s territory, he seemed very nervous and I was scared of frightening him if I went outside – but through the window we had a wonderful view of him eating his nuts for about 15 minutes. His fur is really beautiful with a lovely cream coloured ‘bib’ and he has an amazing fluffy tail.

Because it was through the window, the only photo I could get was not worth displaying, but it was magical to see him at last.

And then later that night we saw an owl (couldn’t tell what species) fly past the webcam. We are also seeing the deer in the garden most early mornings and evenings.

Even worse than that – number 3 in the search is for images associated with my name.  Some of them are connected to me (I see the cats appearing several times) and there is also a dire photo of me giving a presentation about hacking the Surface RT at a conference last year.  But the biggest hit on an image with my name is the obituary of a Marion McCune who died recently aged 91.   He was a kindly looking old man – but not quite the thing for someone looking for a security tester.

So (although I am not that fond of photos of myself) – here is me.