Wildlife Watching
| The Northern Highlands offer some of the most beautiful and unspoilt scenery in Britain, and is home to rich and varied wildlife.
The Moray Firth area has easily viewed populations of bottlenose dolphins, common and grey seals, and roe, red and sika deer. You could also be fortunate and see some of our other more elusive mammals including otter, red squirrel, pine marten, and wildcat. This area is also a superb location for bird watching with osprey and red kites in particular both easily seen in Easter Ross. We believe there are around 30 ospreys frequenting the Cromarty Firth area from early April until late September, and they can be seen on most inland lochs as well as fishing over the firth itself.In addition, golden eagle, hen harrier, peregrine, merlin, short and long-eared owls, capercaillie, black grouse, crested tit, Scottish crossbill, black and red-throated divers, Slavonian grebe and many more birds of note can all be seen locally. Fyrish hill behind Evanton is designated as a Special Protection Area for capercaillie. An excursion to the West Coast or North East to Caithness will give you the opportunity to visit some of the best seabird colonies in the UK where you can see puffins, guillemot, black guillemot, razorbills, gannets, arctic and great skua and many more species. Also on the West Coast is the opportunity to see white-tailed eagle or to take a boat trip to look for otters or marine mammals including whales, dolphins and porpoises.An hour to the South and you're in Speyside where a visit to the Cairngorm National Nature Reserve might turn up dotterel, snow bunting and ptarmigan. Or you can visit Loch Garten & Abernethy Forest, where you may see red squirrels, osprey, capercaillie, crested tit and crossbills.
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 A Dolphin at Chanonry Point |
 Puffins at Handa Island |
Below are links to some of our local wildlife watching operators and nature reserves:
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 Red Deer, Strathconon |
Loch Garten, Abernethy Forest RSPB – nesting ospreys, red squirrels, crossbill, crested tits, capercaillie.
Forsinard – hen harrier, golden plovers, dunlins and merlins.
Loch Ruthven - Slavonian grebes, red-throated divers.
Nigg Bay – large numbers of waders such as bar-tailed godwits and knots, geese and duck in winter; ospreys fishing in the bay in summer.
Udale Bay - waders, geese and duck in winter; up to 5000 wigeon in autumn; ospreys fishing in the bay in summer.
