Experiencing Scotland’s Wild Side: Morvern & Ardnamurchan Peninsula

An area of Scotland I’d always wanted to visit, but never actually gotten around to was the Ardnamurchan Peninsula in the west Highlands. In the last 6 months I’ve been over that way, but rather than Ardnamurchan, I fell in love with Morvern, a lesser known area sandwiched between Ardnamurchan and Mull. I’ve been there three times now since October 2023, and love it so much I am running a tour with local guide Peter Guthrie to share the amazing wildlife and scenery with other photographers. In this blog I’ll share some of my images to demonstrate just how rich the area is for wildlife. It is also truly beautiful. I loved the beautiful old sessile oak trees. I’ve always been drawn to areas of true wilderness, I connect with them more than any other, and this is certainly one of those.

My first visit was last October, a friend and I booked a long weekend based near Strontian, but rather than spending our time in Ardnamurchan, we headed South into Morvern. The weather that weekend was truly awful with amber warnings for heavy rain. On my first day the rain was apocalyptic, so much so, many of the roads flooded!

As my friend was coming a day later than me I booked Peter Guthrie of Days in the Wild, to show me round. Even with the dreadful weather and restricted mobility due to the amount of water we had an enjoyable day and I fell in love with the area. It really is truly wild – moorland, hills and lochs (more lochs than normal that weekend!). Understandably much of the wildlife wasn’t showing but Peter’s intimate knowledge of the area meant he found us otters. They don’t mind wet weather and a female passed close by us as she headed out to fish.

As she fished she was approached by a dog otter and they mated. A little far out for decent images but great to see!

Due to the rain the road back to my accommodation was flooded and closed. Fortunately Peter and his wife own the Lochaline Hotel so I had a bed for the night. The following day the road was passable with care, so I headed back. En route my eye was caught by the rear end of a red deer running off. Due to this I spotted a soggy juvenile white-tailed sea eagle perched on a fence post. I pulled into a passing place and amazing it didn’t fly off until spooked by 3 vans racing to the ferry terminal.

Peter was kind enough to pass on information about a few locations we could visit during our short stay in the area to see the wildlife. The weather remained poor all weekend but we made the most of it nonetheless. One of my favourite spots had a population of feral goats. They have such character! Parked in a layby, we’d see the bracken start moving violently and a goat would pop out, often with a mouthful of grass.

Red deer were plentiful too, this is a fantastic area for deer sightings. We were a little late this year for full-on rutting behaviours but we witnessed some bellowing and chasing. Great to see.

There were plenty of little birds in the bushes and trees to enjoy. I was surprised to see a wheatear in October.

We had some luck watching otters too but mostly out in the lochs, only visible through the mist and rain.

I left Morvern wanting more, and fortunately my wish was granted very quickly when Peter invited me back for a weekend (and he and his fellow Days in the Wild guide Peter Dale came to mine for a reciprocal visit). The weather on this return trip was so much better – I actually saw the hills and amazing views!

We had a full-on couple of days, spending them both locally in Morvern and on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. Otters were on the menu again, it’s hard to spend a day in the area without spotting at least one!

We visited Peter Dale’s red squirrel site in Ardnamurchan where he has a healthy population visiting daily. Red squirrels have been, and continue to be, released in both Ardnamurchan and Morvern as part of a rewilding project by Trees for Life. Early days as yet, but they are doing well which is fantastic news. Always a joy to spend time with squirrels.

In Ardnamurchan we enjoyed some fantastic views and had distant sightings of both golden and white-tailed sea eagles but I had a better white-tail sighting when slowly heading home on my final day as one flew over the cliff above me as I sat watching an otter.

Oh, and, yes, the otter was fab too as she successfully fished in the loch!

I saw huge numbers of red deer, they were everywhere!

And this wren came and kept me company for a while.

I was keen to return again, and did so in May 2024, booking a lovely little cottage on the Rahoy Estate, which is a very quiet spot on the shore of Loch Teacuis. The 7 mile drive along a single-track public, then private, road was a tad challenging for my car, but once I figured out the best way to approach it (very very slowly!) it was ok and the drive was certainly scenic with plenty of bird life and red deer en route. Nice to see a whinchat, although it refused to pose for photographs.

Red deer were at the cottage to greet us. Apparently they like to sleep in the garden so were a little disgruntled at our presence.

We were surrounded by wildlife – lots of little birds including my first sighting (and poor photograph) of a garden warbler. We heard lots of willow warblers, black caps and grasshopper warblers, but they proved elusive.

We had hoped for evening pine marten visits but instead we were entertained by a female badger. she would return repeatedly to check if we’d replenished the nut supply and could even climb the tree to access the feeders and food placed higher up for the martens.

We did try to give her some tasty vegetables and fruit to eat (blueberries, strawberries and carrot) but she turned her nose up at those. The midges were terrible over the first couple of nights, you can see the cloud of them around her. She scratched a lot and that’s probably one of the reasons why.

There was a bench down at the loch and sitting on it, listening to the birds (arctic terns, gulls, divers) and watching the common seals was a lovely way to start and end the day (except for the aforementioned midges who love me).

The best thing about the cottage though was the resident otter. He appeared directly in front of the cottage (and the above bench) on 3 occasions popping his head out of the seaweed directly opposite me. Such a thrill to sit watching him as he fished and relaxed. Frustratingly, when he came ashore on one occasion and did a full groom I had a rock in front – pah!

We had three more fantastic otter experiences at another location where a mum and two mature cubs were out and about fishing. They were finding a lot of food! The first day the light was pretty good. Only one of the otters came ashore. She brought back three crabs one after the other and then disappeared up into the rocks, presumably heading home to for a snooze.

On the other two occasions we had amazing sightings but truly awful conditions for photography – bright sunshine and heat haze. So frustrating!

On our final morning, one of the youngsters brought a massive fish to shore and struggled to eat it!

We spent a day with Peter Guthrie looking for wildlife. Not many photographs, but a fair few sightings including a roe deer (very unsual for the area) and both white-tailed and golden eagles – at one point they were interacting but it was fairly distant.

We also managed to photograph one of the many cuckoos – we heard them everywhere that week, but they were camera shy.

A bird I struggle with is the whitethroat. There were plenty about during the week and I did eventually manage a few images I was pleased with. They are my favourite of the warblers who visit in the summer months.

There were many many other species of birds to see including great northern divers, stonechats, whinchats (distant), barn swallows and reed bunting.

And the feral goats with their kids made a few appearances too which was great! I loved the little devil horns on this youngster.

Morvern & The West Coast Photography Trip

It is such a rich area for wildlife, and very quiet in comparison to some of the other locations on the West coast of Scotland. I am therefore running, in collaboration with Peter Guthrie a photography holiday there in October 2024. We’ll stay in the Lochaline Hotel and spend five days photographing the wildlife of Morvern, Ardnamurchan Peninsula and Mull. Peter now has a wildlife boat with some amazing white-tailed sea eagle views too which will be fantastic and it’s red deer rutting season too! If you’d like more information on this please check out the dedicated page on my website. It’s going to be a great few days.

In other news, my 2025 calendars are now available to purchase from my etsy store. There are a couple of images taken on Morvern featured in the Scottish Wildlife calendar!

Thanks for reading, coming soon my very delayed Finland blogs!