My Scottish Winter Wilflife Tour Begins!
After an 8 hour drive up from Wales to Scotland, I have arrived in Inverness for my Winter Wildlife Tour, hosted by Karen Miller. After a bit of a rough night’s sleep, due to the wind whipping around the building, I am ready for day one of my tour, where we are going to see the red squirrels and crested tits … hopefully!
I am meeting Karen outside my tiny home for the week, The Drey, and we have a short walk into the woods to get to site. Karen has been feeding squirrels here since the 2020 Covid lockdown and up until the last snowstorm, regularly had four squirrels visiting. Since the storm however, they seem to have gone a bit quiet, but hopefully we will have one come in to visit.
It is a windy old day today, but the location where the squirrels are is in a bit of a dip, which is great as the wind is freezing, and down here we are out of it. There is no hide here, so I set myself up on my seat pad and armed myself with my 70-200mm f2.8 GM ii lens. As it is winter, and isn’t 9 am yet, it is a tad dark, so with this lens I can set it to f2.8 to get as much light in as possible, keeping my ISO down.
We didn’t need to wait long before the first squirrel came in to feed. She seemed quite skittish compared to the four squirrels that had been visiting, so Karen is thinking that this is a new visitor.
It was just magical sitting out in the woodland, watching this squirrel do her thing, without a hide. With the calls of the woodland birds and the wind in the trees I felt even closer to nature.
At a lull in proceedings, and with the light getting brighter, I was able to swap onto my 200-600mm f5.6-6.3 G lens. With the added reach, I was able to get some tighter images of the squirrel, giving me more of a variety of images.
It was still just the one squirrel coming in to visit, and she had been out digging, as she had dirt all over her nose!
After another quiet patch, we headed back to base for lunch, before heading out to the crested tit site.
It was a short drive, to location, we were actually using Karen’s friend’s James’ crested tit site, as unfortunately the pair that were visiting Karen’s original location had disappeared. While she does have a new site set up with a single crested tit visiting, this location was getting regular visits from a pair of birds, so we tried here first.
Once at the site, Karen moved some of the feeders so hopefully, the birds would perch on the nearby trees, before popping onto the feeder. When we were getting set up, we did have our first cresty come in, which was a good sign. However, this was when the wind really picked up.
While waiting for the cresties to hopefully come back, I got my camera set up and practiced shooting the little coal tits that were coming into visit. I am so happy with how this image came out; I just needed to hope that the cresty would pay a visit and sit exactly the same on this branch …. So, I wasn’t asking for much!
After a while of wating, with no sight nor sound of a crested tit, we decided to cut our losses, and head over to Karen’s new site, in the hopes of seeing her cresty. It was only a short drive and walk away, and once there, I pulled my 70-200 lens as it was now starting to get dark.
At 15:20, we FINALLY had a crested tit come onto the feeder. I made sure to get some images, and a bit of video of this, just in case this was my only chance at capturing anything of the cresties.
It wasn’t on the feeder for long, and once it moved off, Karen moved the feeder further out, in the hopes that it would encourage the crested tit to perch on a branch before hopping onto the feeder …. it didn’t! While the cresty was still around, it couldn’t get it’s head around that the feeder had moved by about a foot! Karen said that usually, you start to ‘train’ the birds in October, when the crested tits start to come into feeders. You put your feeders out and move them around so that the birds get used to them moving about. As she unfortunately lost the pair at her original site, this cresty had only been in training a few weeks, and was a bit slow on the uptake.
I did manage to get one more record shot, before we called it a day and headed back to base.
While I didn’t get the encounter and images of the crested tits that I was hoping for, it was a brilliant start to my winter wildlife tour, and we should get another chance at the creasties later in the week. I am super happy with the images that I got of the squirrels in the morning – these will be making it onto my 2026 photo book that is for sure!
Tomorrow is mountain hare day, which is what I have been looking forward to the most, so I have slapped everything on charge so that I can stay warm and photograph all day! It is an early start, so I am off to bed and shall see you in the next episode.
Check out Karen’s website for more information on her tours and guiding.