Snippets from Scotland

Got this from an on-line newspaper, called Scottish Snippets........love reading all these little bits of news.

Tartan Week To Go Down Under?
So far, the support of the Scottish Government to Tartan Week has been
concentrated largely in the USA, particularly in New York with the parade
along Sixth Avenue and other events. The tourism agency VisitScotland has
also hosted the first Scotland in Toronto Week to tap into the Scottish
ancestry of many Canadians. Now Scottish Culture Minister Linda Fabiani has
suggested that she is keen to strengthen links in the Antipodes, with a
Scotland Week in Australia. The Scottish Government is trying to change the
name of the event to "Scotland Week" to focus on the modern aspects of
Scotland - and also halved the budget this year for the event in the US to
around £400,000. So there are some mixed messages coming across.

7,000 Bikers Roar into Children's Hospital
Around 7,000 motor cyclists and their passengers roared into the Royal
Hospital for Sick Children at Yorkhill, Glasgow - to hand deliver thousands
of chocolate eggs to egg-cited young patients. This has become an annual
event organised by the Motorcycle Action Group which raised £30,000 for the
event last year.

Britain's Biggest Meteorite
Scientists from Aberdeen and Oxford universities have uncovered evidence
that the largest meteorite ever to hit the British Isles struck an area
near Ullapool in the west coast of Scotland - 1.2 billion years ago. The
unusual rock formations in the area were thought at one time to be caused
by volcanic activity, but with no volcanic vents or sediments nearby, that
theory had often been questioned. Now the researchers have found material
that had been ejected by a meteorite impact, spread over an area of 30
square miles. They estimate that the object must have been more than half a
mile wide and created a crater seven miles across. Craters on Earth tend to
get eroded, so the scientists are pleased to have found the new evidence.

Top of the Pecking Order
The Big Garden Bird Watch 2008, organised by the Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds, shows that the chaffinch is the most commonly-sighted
feathered friend in Scotland's gardens. Those taking part saw on average
5.43 chaffinches over an hour, when the survey was run in January. The
second most common bird reported was the house sparrow, followed by the
starling. Even though the total numbers were smaller, the blackbird was the
most widely-seen bird, found in over 90% of gardens. But being territorial,
blackies are rarely seen in any numbers in the one garden. For the first
time the colourful siskin flew into the top ten - their numbers bolstered
this year by Scandinavian immigrants. Overall, the survey suggested that
fewer birds were seen compared with last year. Last summer's poor weather
may have taken its toll of fledglings although milder winters also meant
fewer birds came in this year from the countryside to feed in gardens as
they had enough food in the wild.