WRITING this in the third weekend of the year, I might be excused for feeling a little beaten-up by the weather.
The thought of doing a bit of light country walking and garden birdwatching is rather appealing just now, however.
The wind has caught a few people unawares recently, blowing them over and lifting them off the ground. I don't remember a time for so many injuries caused by severe winds on the hill.
The famously strong winds on Cairn Gorm are much easier to tolerate if they are steady, but recent storms have come in from all sides in quick succession, swirling round the hills.
Sensing a break in the snow showers that were sweeping across Cairngorm last Saturday, I went out to see if there were any climbers to be seen, or mountain birds.
A new snow shower swept past me as I walked up to Coire an t-Sneachda, driving me before it, and I thought it would be over by the time I got there, giving me some clear air to look through. Some hope.
People talk of sheltered aspects, and getting behind a big boulder for shelter, but there wasn't any.
Boulders that were big enough to create a slightly sheltered niche were constantly being blasted by side-eddies, spraying mobile snowdrift and piling it up until the next side-eddy took it away again.
I resolved to wait for an improvement, and watched the scene disappear behind another supercooled blast and reappear with wraiths of snow streaming away from the boulders as they lay.
Sometimes figures of people walking would appear and stagger their way across the view, all hoping to get out of the wind on lower ground.
At last a view of the cliffs appeared. Though the cloud was off the tops, snow blowing around in the air made the cliffs look hazy. It was difficult to distinguish familiar features, let alone climbers, and taking binoculars out of the pack was out of the question.
Within 10 minutes, I realised that my face had accumulated a layer of ice despite my shelter and hoods. I scraped it off and put on goggles, tucked my balaclava helmet into the goggles frames all round and set off back into the teeth of the blast.
For many years, I never carried or needed goggles all winter long, only once having my face frozen when descending steep ground into a sudden updraught. This winter I have needed and used them 20 times. I can't imagine facing such a storm without them, though some people do.
There was nothing surprising about the gusts coming on the way back. They could be seen quarter of a mile away as they picked up snow from the moor and blew it along like a mobile wall of icy particles. Sometimes it stopped me in my tracks.
Needless to say, I saw no ptarmigan, white hares or red grouse. They will have their well-known corners, slight burrows on lee slopes where they can keep themselves from being buried by the occasional shake of the head. There have been no snow buntings, either, and they seem immune to discomfort.
Despite the snow arriving in the showers I was experiencing, there was not actually a lot of it on the ground.
The winds have been so strong this winter, they have tended to blow it all off the windward slopes and deposit it over the back of Cairn Gorm, where it provides a considerable avalanche risk.
So looking at the ski area makes it clear that running a good ski season in 2012 is quite a challenge. There is actually more snow on the mountains above Newtonmore, more again on Creag Meagaidh, and Lochaber seems well-supplied too.
It is common for more snow to fall in the west, but Cairn Gorm usually holds onto it better. This winter has been just too windy.
So I am quite pleased to turn my attention instead to the lower ground.
The lack of snow here has made things a little easier for wildlife and farm animals, though I wouldn't ever say that there was a 'easy' winter for either.
Insh Community Holdings was pleased to announce that the local farmer had been able to plant a sacrificial crop in one of the strip-fields above the village to benefit finches.
For a while this had become snow-covered, but for most of this month it has been clear, allowing the birds to benefit.
Finches are sometimes seen in big flocks - a particularly big one between Dulnain Bridge and Grantown this week - where they can look out for feeding opportunities and confuse predators.
That reminds me that the most depressing website I have reviewed this week has the cheerful title raptor persecution Scotland. The relevance to this area, where land management interests would be horrified to be associated with any such activity, is that the second of two radio-tracked golden eagles to have been raised at Gaick has disappeared.
Its twin sister was found poisoned at Glenbuchat Estate last year, and now this one has disappeared in the Monadhliath after a year of reliable radio signals.
The website also carries an account of a mysterious disappearance of a golden eagle corpse at Lochindorb.
It seems immensely difficult to eradicate poisoning, and one additional set of problems could make sure we don't see any more of these birds. Apparently, they cannot cope with wind turbines either. With the Allt Duine development by Kincraig now going to public inquiry, I wonder if that will be a consideration.
We still have raptors in Insh.
My next-door neighbour had a great-spotted woodpecker on one nut feeder and a red squirrel on the other when all the other little birds disappeared in a flash and a silent grey sparrowhawk zipped through and was gone in a second. Empty-handed that time.
MY NEIGHBOUR and I, and many other locals, are looking forward to the annual Big Garden Birdwatch which is being held this weekend.
Anyone can join in, whether or not they are a member of the RSPB or pre-register through their website.
Watchers just count the highest number of each species of bird they see over one hour in a small area (a garden or a park, for instance) and submit the results to the Big Garden Birdwatch.
If you're having difficulty submitting your results through the Internet, and your local library or community resource can't help, you could post them to me and I will forward them.
After the rigours of contending with the mountain weather, the prospect of spending an hour with a hot drink watching the garden is quite appealing.
I'm indebted to my local experts and correspondents to pass on news from the lookout over Insh Marshes.
Water birds are well represented, as you would expect, with 77 white-fronted geese of the European race with two of the more usual Greenland race, and over 60 whooper swans, two cormorants and lots of wigeon and mallard.
There has been a juvenile white-tailed eagle sitting around in the Marsh at times, too. On January 10, a glaucous gull was seen.
That's a big, bulky pale-coloured gull that scavenges carrion, and is occasionally seen on our winter shoreline, but not often inland. Highlight, for early-risers, was a family of otters, a female and two large cubs, seen on two occasions this year.
Birdwatch results can be posted to Nic Bullivant, Head Ranger, Cairngorm Mountain Ranger Service, Ranger Base, Cairngorm Mountain, PH22 1RB.
Thanks to local experts and correspondents. If you would like to report something for inclusion in the Country Diary, please get in touch with Nic at (01479) 861327.
