Mother Nature must have a wee summer soft spot for our patch.
Well, perhaps not for the good folk of Glenisla and their dedicated Highland Games committee but, with 147 previous gatherings under the belt, a dreich day was never going to spoil their fun on Friday past.
Where we’ve really scored in the past couple of weeks is in the treats and tales the natural world has brought to our skies and shores.
Up the coast at St Cyrus, visitors are flooding to the glorious stretch of sand in the hope of catching a glimpse of a humpback whale.
Since a family of German holidaymakers were joined in the North Sea by the majestic baleen which came out to play just metres away it’s been whale fever up there.
There’s even hope the humpback may not be a solitary tourist, but however many there are, megaptera novaeanglia is not proving coy and that’s great news for the crowds.
Balgavies Loch is also witnessing its latest brood of three ospreys growing up fast, but it’s a bigger bird than even those magnificent migrants which was the high point of my week.
It turns out that a Romeo raptor has made a bit of history – and his ladies very happy no doubt – by becoming Scotland’s first Sea Eagle to successfully sire chicks with two different females.
Not only that, but the bold eagle has shown remarkable stamina to play the daddy with one mate in Fife, while at the same time having a bidie-in over in an Angus love nest.
The reintroduction of these spectacular birds in Fife has been a real success story, but this chap can claim to be something special.
For, while other white tails have tried and failed to lead a double life in nests just a few miles apart, Torquoise Z has managed it with a 90-minute journey time, as the eagle flies, over almost 30 miles.
It seems both he and the humpbacks have twigged to the very definite attractions of our little corner of Courier Country.
