My winter wildlife season has started

It’s mid January and I’m enjoying a rare day off during my busy winter wildlife photography guiding season. I’m spending the vast majority of my days until mid-March introducing clients to some of our wonderful wildlife: red squirrels, crested tits, mountain hares, red deer and whatever else we come across on our travels. 

I run three day/four night residential packages over the winter where clients stay in my on site self-catering cabin The Drey Inchberry. I also squeeze in some one day guiding sessions and workshops too. It’s a busy time, but an enjoyable one. I love winter and meeting so many new like-minded people.

We’ve had a real mix of weather so far. December was a month of storms and weather warnings with a few lovely cold wintery days in the mix too. There’s been a lot of fog and mist here too which fortunately doesn’t really impact many of the species I’m photographing.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my red squirrel family. My original bunch almost all departed in the autumn, as they did the year before, presumably to find their own food elsewhere. I also lost my last two original squirrels at the end of the year, the wonderful sweet Emmylou and bully but very cute to look at, Coop. This is so sad, but they brought myself and many others so much joy over the 3 years we spent together and hopefully mothered/fathered a lot of kittens. This was Emmylou. One of the last images I took of her.

Unlike the year before, the other squirrels who went off haven’t (yet) returned. Fortunately this gave a group of youngsters the opportunity to move in, and I’ve been working with them, getting them used to people over the past couple of months. Initially they’d sit in the trees clucking at me and only venturing down to the feeders, but now they are very confident with me and my clients although still wary of each other. There are definitely 4, could be more. 3 boys and a girl.

One of these has to be the son of Coop, he looks almost identical and has a few of the same mannerisms. However his tail is shorter and he has a completely different personality. Where Coop was the patriarch and a bully who chased away all the other boy squirrels, this one comes in, plonks himself down and eats. He ignores the others and they ignore him (whilst chasing each other). I’ve called him Troop, after another deceased musician I knew – Greg Trooper (check his music out!)

There’s a female I’ve named Eva (after Eva Cassidy). She was very shy for a long time but has become confident.

And two more boys. One is a little younger I think and is the least confident. He tends to spend a lot of time at either the bird feeder or squirrel feeder eating peanuts and darting up into the trees when another squirrel appears. When he does eat a hazelnut it takes him ages to break into the shell but he is getting better at it! The other boy, as yet, isn’t very distinctive, but beautiful. No sign of any being dominant as yet.

The colours changed at my site in the autumn and I was able to photograph the squirrels in the wonderful orange hues. I’m fortunate in that some of the little beech trees retain their leaves all winter which adds a beautiful warmth to the images too.

My absolute favourite conditions for photographing the squirrels is when we have snow / it’s snowing. Sadly I don’t see much snow where I live as I’m too close to the Beauly Firth. However, this past week we had a few days when there was a fair amount. I spent 3 mornings with the squirrels. On the first and third they were fantastic and cached/ate so many hazelnuts I ran out. The middle day they only came in for a short period. This would have been their first experience of proper snow and they dealt with it very well. Even my shy little boy plucked up the confidence to take hazelnuts.

Here’s a short film of them from the first day as the initial snow fell.

I took a terrifying number of images over the course of the three morning, I can’t share all of them here, but this is a small(ish) selection.

Fantastic! The forecast for the next week or so comprises weather warning after weather warning for wind and rain, and I have everything crossed that at least some of clients will be able to enjoy conditions like those I experienced above during the winter. It certainly won’t be my poor clients this week though.

The crested tits at my new site continue to impress with their reliability. There are at least four of them and they are very active. Still a challenge to photograph though as they rarely sit for long, but it’s fun trying!

I managed to spend a little time with them during a snow shower:

There’s a treecreeper who visits fairly regularly, and I was pleased with this image.

Long-tailed tits do visit every-so-often, but I’ve more success with them at my squirrel site so far.

Another species we photograph on my winter wildlife tours are red deer. This year the herd is larger than I’ve seen before with a good mixture of adults of both sexes and youngsters. I’ve only been up once so far and although no snow, the deer and ground were frosty.

There were a couple of Sika deer stags too.

The mountain hares are showing relatively well. I confess as I had no clients at the time, I didn’t have the guts to drive there during the snowy period last week as I was worried about the roads and carpark, but I was up the week before and my client and I sat with a great hare. There was a little snow!

Finally, on the subject of mountain hares. Last winter I was asked by Rachel Sarah to be part of a film she, and fellow filmmaker and director Emma Crome were making on mountain hares. We spent a few days on the hills as I introduced them to how wonderful these animals are. I was even able to take Rachel Sarah up to meet Bo. Sadly the film itself is still a work-in-progress due to a lack of funding, however MPB sponsored a making of the film documentary and that is now available, it was filmed by Roxanna Barry. Crazy to have a making of a film when we couldn’t actually complete the actual film, but hey, this is better than nothing! It’s filmed on the hills and in my rental cabin. You can read more about it on Rachel’s website.

That’s it for now. I may go dark for a while due to my workshops. If you’d like to book a winter wildlife tour or workshop in the 2024/25 season please do get in touch. If you reserve a space soon you’ll receive the current prices. Please note February dates must include accommodation.

Cards and a few prints are available on my Etsy page, more prints on my website. Follow me on social media for brand new images.

I am now almost exclusively using a Nikon Z8 camera with a variety of both DSLR and mirrorless lenses.

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