OK not a lot of wildlife interest in this post, but I just had show this photo of a particularly weird event that happened on my flight home from Inverness to Manchester today.
I was looking out of the window and I saw a rainbow ring appear on the clouds outside the plane. As I watched it got brighter and brighter until suddenly the shadow of the plane appeared in the centre. It was really quite colourful, bright and sharp, but by the time I'd got my camera ready it had started to fade, but you can still make it out.
It turns out it's a Brocken spectre, something I've never seen before but which is a rare occurance from planes and on mountains. Some mountains are apparently quite prone to Brocken spectres, most notably Brocken in Germany from where it gets its name, and they are also offered as a possible explanation for the legendary Grey Man of Ben MacDui.
Brocken spectres are explained here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brocken_spectre (opens in a new window)
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