Cottage Diary - Aspenwood self catering luxury Holiday Cottage overlooking Loch Ness in the Highlands of Scotland.

Most of the snow has now disappeared from the mountain tops opposite us although the higher Ben Wyvis range northwards beyond Inverness is still covered. We have had frosty nights followed by crisp clear blue skies during the day and the temperature is rising slowly - about 12 degrees today and very pleasant. A lot of noisy bird activity about with an abundance of chirpy chaffinches and siskins flying about playing chase me. We even managed to spot an elusive blackcap which is normally an April visitor to Scotland as well as seeing our first red admiral butterfly this morning outside Aspenwood - again unusually early.

The deer have started to come down in the evening from the hill tops and happily munch away at the grass on the front bank. We can hear them calling to each other in the early morning mist often from the other side of Loch Ness as the sound travels easily across the water. Sometimes they are rather bold and enable you to get quite close to them and others are shy and speed away into the surrounding forest.

It is also getting alot lighter later and tomorrow the clocks spring forward one hour so even better. We really feel that the Winter is truly behind us and we can look forward to enjoyable longer daylight hours and sitting outside more often.

There have been a few more boating craft using the loch this week but today we saw somebody really making the most of the change in the weather and we waved encouragment as he bravely canoed past the house.