The light was beautiful when I went out with the dogs this morning.

I took with me a pile of chopped carrots that I had forgottent to put in the breakast buckets for the Icelandic senior citizens.

Luckily, they choked them down to be polite, you understand or possibly for science.

Bibble was on sparkling form and I may use one of these photos to send to Ardene House Vets, Aberdeen to say thank you for his cancer care this year.

There were times when I honestly didn’t think we would get this far with him.  I never stop worrying.

But, here we are with Bibble and his silly-frilly in full working order.  Phew!

However, I will not be using this photo – Bibble giving Kolka “the evils”.

When I said “smile for the camera, please”, though, they both did.

Then an Abba moment. It’s Björn and Agnetha all over again!

I left them to it.

Meanwhile Haakon wandered over too.

He is looking very good too and I am pleased with him.

He is the oldest of the group (herd) and will be 30 years old next year.  I have had him for 27 years.

And he’s still just the same!

A wise but aloof chap who hates being hugged, though I do sneak the odd one in when I can grab my moment.

On with the dogwalk and I left the horses all to the serious business of stuffing their faces.

We had a beautiful sunrise this morning and I am trying hard not to think “red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning”.  This shepherd is ignoring that.

It was still and pretty while I fed the Shetland ponies their daily bucket of nothing mixed with vitamins and minerals.

Tiddles and Albie finished their’s early, or were pushed off by greedier ponies, so they came up to hassle me to let them eat Fivla’s bucket – she is a very slow eater.  I said no, and tried diversion tactics instead.

The ice on the ponies’ water bucket was a good 1.75cm thick.  I broke it with my foot and lifted out the floating icebergs with my hands wishing I had remembered to wear gloves!

The ponies finished up their breakfast and you can see that behind them they have a huge hill of uneaten old grass to get through.

Despite Tiddles’ best efforts, they are not starving.

The ice seems to thaw slightly during the day and then comes back, growing another layer on the plants.

I find it fascinating.

The ice crystals grow like mad chemistry experiments everywhere.

I found an ice flower.  That was stunning.  I love the frill at the bottom.  I wish I had taken more photos but I couldn’t feel my toes or fingers at this stage.

I may be more than a little obssessed with ice crystals now, just not the sheet black ice variety – now that is lethal.

Before you look at the photos below, I want you to know that it was blimmin’ freezing when I stood outside the backdoor, in my slippers, head-torch on, and iPhone precariously balanced on two long screws (with a huge Belfast sink of old green water below), while trying to remember to turn my head-torch off before I pressed the remote shutter release, which I found on my watch (how cool is that?)

I was also trying to cook supper too so there was lots of toing and froing.

Last night, the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis or Mirrie Dancers, as they are called in Shetland, started up surprisingly early.  Around 17:18.

I started to get quite excited at this point – 17:45.

And it was quite well spread out too – this is looking more north north west.

After supper, I went back out at 19:03 to see the moon rising, which added too much light for seeing anything much and it seemed that everything had calmed down again.

So I didn’t bother much looking, though I kept an eye on things via the Sumburgh Cliffcam 3, and Facebook. I had my bath and went to bed to read and relax when I received a message saying they were back, so I hopped out, now in my dressing-gown and took these last photos.

Yes, it was freezing cold (serious brass monkeys) but it was definitely worth it.  Thanks, Mandy for your message! ❤️

I wasn’t expecting to be met this morning by such a hard frost from last night.  It was spectacular.  The world was white and crunchy.

The Shetland ponies were covered in frost and it best showed up on the darker ones.

Waffle

Newt

Albie’s tail – top

I took the ice out of the large water bucket by stamping on it, picking out the pieces by hand (cold much and possibly a stupid idea without gloves) and noted that the ice was at least 1 cm thick.

No one was feeling the cold. The ponies were all happy shovelling their daily breakfast in while I blew on my fingers trying to regain feeling.

The native ponies’ coats were doing exactly what they are designed to do – to provide efficient insulation and protection. They have a “double coat” which works very well, especially this time of year.

It had been a clear night – hence the hard frost.

I think it will freeze again tonight and also there has been:-

“A recent solar explosion that almost reached “X-class” status has hurled a massive coronal mass ejection toward Earth, which will likely hit our planet and trigger a geomagnetic storm on Dec. 1.” –  Live Science.

So, there might be some impressive “merrie dancers” (northern lights) tonight.  I shall pop outside the back door occasionally this evening to look, but I’m not staying long out there – not in these temperatures.  Blimmin’ cold, I tell ye.

If you want to watch too – go here – https://www.shetlandwebcams.com/cliff-cam-3/. You get to stay warm!

The ducks, having learned to fly, are practising height now.

Today I found these three youngsters on top of one of the containers.  Two girls and one boy.

They are all huge characters.  Watching the politics and hierarchy is interesting. The girls are not shy in telling the boys what they think of them.

This is the face of a boy duck who has been told off by a girl duck, possibly his sister.

You know she is the boss.

I did hear OH tell someone that we had “far too many ducks these days”, so I ignored that comment because I can’t imagine getting rid of any but spring-time might be a different matter.

We’ll see.  At the moment, things are fairly peaceful on the duck front and they are a cheery bunch, very enthusiastic about food with fairly good manners to me and each other.