Wildlife in the Highlands

We had a wonderful holiday in and around Pitlochry. Wonderful mountains, waterfalls and wildlife!

We went to Loch of Lowes nature reserve where we had wonderful views of red squirrels, this one was feeding on one of the bird feeders and let Crafty Green Boyfriend take its photo. In the background on the left hand side you can see a greater spotted woodpecker, and we saw plenty of them on the trip! On the Loch itself we saw an osprey, not close enough for a photo but it looked wonderfully majestic as it sat on a tree across the water. Unfortunately if you read the Loch of the Lowes blog you will see that the female osprey has become very ill. Hopefully she will pull through and if not hopefully the male will be able to continue to bring up the chicks himself.

We saw a lot of red deer while we were away. While we walked along part of the River Dee, there was a herd of red deer on the hills on the opposite bank who followed us along as we walked.

There were lots of swallows, house martins and swifts everywhere. We saw a swallows' nest in a roof with a couple of youngsters almost falling out. On a couple of evenings we ate at a country pub, sitting outside with views of the village square, swifts and house martins chasing each other round the church spire and the rooftops and house sparrows chirping cheerily from the privet hedges. House sparrow numbers are plummeting across the UK and its always cheerign to see a colony so obviously thriving.

We also caught glimpses of frogs, toads, a lizard, a baby black rabbit and droppings from what we think was probably a pine marten.

We also saw lots of interesting insects and they deserve a post to themselves, so that will come along later in the week as will some photos of waterfalls and mountains!