The privilege of living in the countryside in the Scottish Highlands is something I never fail to appreciate. The wildlife visitors that are seen from my office window or when wandering around the garden, are an almost daily reminder of how special this is.
With the onset of Spring and now in early Summer, the wildlife activity has definitely been on the increase. I thought I’d put together here a collection of some of the wildlife encounters I’ve had while either looking up to the skies or watching nature going about its daily routine.
One of my favourite birds is the red kite. They are frequent visitors to our area, on many occasions flying low over our bungalow, or being chased by crows as they circle the nearby fields and rough pastures.
The buzzard is a regular visitor. More recently it has taken to hunting above some fallow ground opposite our home. This has provided some excellent opportunities to capture photos of this stunning bird. The other evening the lighting was almost perfect as the low sun lit up the bird with its warm light as it flew quite close to where I was.
Birdlife is not just limited to the raptors. We’re not feeding the birds during the summer months to reduce the risk of disease among our feathered friends, but there is still plenty of activity, especially over these breeding months.
We also have an abundance of insect life, the bees currently taking advantage of large numbers of fox gloves that self seed around the garden.
One of the most exciting small visitors we’ve seen this year was a common lizard. It took a liking to an old trellis outside our back door. For a few days we saw it sunning itself in the warm Spring sun.
This year our pond hosted an incredible number of frogs, gathering for their mating season. It was a sight to behold with all these little and not so little heads sticking out of the water and croaking away.
Last but not least, being so close to the woods, our neighbours have frequent visits from the red squirrels and not so frequent (that we notice) appearances of local pine marten. Late one evening recently I was able to get some very low light photos of the pine marten as he attempted to empty the squirrel feeder. Capturing these record shots was an exciting end to the day.
