Mercedes the polar bear in deep snow

Mercedes the polar bear at the Highland Wildlife Park in Kincraig experiences deep snow for the first time since leaving Canada 26 years ago. Before moving to the Highland Wildlife Park in October 2009 she stayed in Edinburgh Zoo.

I've been waiting a few weeks to do these pictures, checking the weather forecast every day, up early every morning to see if it had snowed during the night. Last night my girlfriend Katie and I were back up in Ross-shire for a Christmas party, and we had the option to stay up there overnight, but it was obvious that the Mercedes pics would happen today so at 12:30am we headed back down to Kingussie, a journey that took 3.5 hours due to icy roads.

Fortunately the morning's weather didn't disappoint, so after 4 hours' sleep it was off to the Wildlife Park. Mercedes didn't disappoint either…

This robin landed near Mercedes and wandered around for a few seconds before hopping up on to her paw. She wasn't having any of that and lashed out…

That's one big bear bum…

And here's the big girl having a good old roll in the white chilly stuff. One of the other shots from this sequence was used to illustrate a weather item on the BBC News web site. It was the BBC that originally asked for snowy pics of Mercedes, although lots of newspapers have since got interested in them too.