A Look Back at 2024

Where has 2024 gone? I was pretty useless at writing blogs so I thought I’d do a summary of the year covering those areas not in the few blogs I’ve shared.

The first 3 months of the year were all about my winter wildlife tours. I was fortunate to be fully booked for these and my guests and I battled pretty wild weather conditions but had some fantastic photographic encounters.

The species almost everyone wishes to see are the mountain hares. A favourite of mine too. Very little in the way of snow, and plenty in the way of gale force winds! If there’s no snow it doesn’t look as great, so a second best weather condition was rain. I dragged my poor clients there on the wettest days, but I think they all approved of my decision after seeing the hares shaking off the rain and looking very bedraggled (just like us!). Quite a few of these ones (all except the first three) are of favourite hare Bo. More about her later…

I only had snow once during my workshops which came as a bit of a surprise! The hares were playing hard to get this day, but I found a couple for a very delighted client.

I took clients to photograph red deer (and bonus sika). Sadly, again, very little in the way of snow all winter, but some frost was welcome.

Due to the weather the snow bunting weren’t showing particularly well, so we photographed red grouse instead. And spotted a roe deer too!

Clients enjoyed visits to my local squirrels and crested tits. The cresties were fantastic last winter, I had 4 coming in regularly to my new site in a larch/scots pine wood.

I had new squirrels this year, youngsters who took advantage of a bit of a vacuum after I sadly lost my two remaining originals (Emmylou and Coop). 5 to begin with, although sadly one didn’t make it through the winter. Unfortunately, the only good snow we had came when I didn’t have any clients due to a cancellation. But I took advantage of it.

One client wasn’t interested in the hares and we spent a day in Burghead instead. It was great and made a refreshing change for me! Beautiful weather and some gorgeous reflections in the harbour. The turnstones were the stars.

Once winter was over it took me a month or two to recover! Although I did spent a fantastic week in Finland photographing brown bears, wolves, wolverine, red squirrels, sea eagles and so much more. Read about that here. This was my favourite bear.

I spent a week in Morvern in May which you can read about in this blog. This is one of my favourite places. Image shows the badger (and midges) who visited every evening.

The weather over the summer was pretty awful and I was dealing with a fast deteriorating dog, Murphy, who I couldn’t leave on his own for very long. I bid a sad farewell to him in July. It was therefore very quiet workwise although I did welcome a lot of guests to my rental cabin The Drey Inchberry which was good. My main project was the local pine martens. This is just for me as they are very wary but it’s always a thrill to see them, both in person and on my trail cameras. There were more this year, last year’s kits, a male and female, at least one other female plus a pair of kits. Mum and one kit were regular visitors, and latterly I had a pair of youngsters who were wonderful. They’d come in for up to an hour, not to eat, but just to play with each other. Fighting, pouncing and chasing. I loved to watch them on the cameras. The weather was frustratingly overcast most evenings so it wasn’t possible to go up and photograph them, plus they are very unreliable! But I did have some sightings.

Here are the kits – so much fun!

Wonderful!!

There was also a super cute female red squirrel kitten at my marten site. She was a very feisty little thing and would chase away both jays and wood pigeons.

I made one trip out to Troup Head to see the gannet colony. It’s quite a long drive from my house but worth the journey to see these gorgeous birds up close. It was quite early on, so not many youngsters as yet but a fair bit of interaction between birds.

I had a few enjoyable visits to Chanonry Point for the bottle-nosed dolphins. Now that there are sadly far fewer salmon they don’t appear close to shore as often. Always great fun when they breach, even if it is challenging to photograph.

Talking of salmon, and some optimistic news, they were fantastic for a few days in early September at Rogie Falls. I’ve never seen so many leaping out the water at once. It’s so incredible watching them attempt to scale the Falls.

We had a plentiful autumn in 2024, so much so both the squirrels and little birds all but disappeared, finding their own food. Of course, this is fantastic, and how it should be, but I did miss them all. The crested tits, who were brilliant, and very active last October were rarely seen this year which was such a shame as they look beautiful in the golden larch needles. I did succeed in taking a few images of them though… and a goldcrest.

A couple of the red squirrels reappeared too – Eva and Arlo (also known as Loopy). They’ve been very active since which is a bit of a relief. The site is back looking orange and gorgeous again after the ever-so-green summer months.

During the autumn I also visited a few of the Inverness Glens which look stunning at this time of year. Other than the glorious colours of the leaves, the highlight were the feral goats. Always good to see them!

In early October I spent a week on Mull with my parents. We had some beautiful weather so I took advantage of it to visit a few of my favourite locations, just to enjoy them

The latter part of the week was all about otters. I spent many hours sitting on a beach in some very wet weather with friend, and fellow guide, James Roddie. It was worth it though. The otters at this location are very chilled, too chilled in fact, I don’t really approve, but it meant that the usual fieldcraft of hiding behind rocks, downwind of an otter so as not to be spotted & stress the animal is unnecessary. If you sit quietly the otters just go about their business, unconcerned about your presence. One even came and almost sniffed our feet on a couple of occasions. I, for one, didn’t breath for about a minute the first time this happened.

I was back in the West a few weeks later, this time in Morvern again. Again, otters were the highlight – I wrote a blog about the week.

Since my return I’ve been working towards the 2024/25 winter wildlife season. I’ve already had a couple of successful tours – we even had snow on both! Hopefully this winter will be better weather-wise than last.

Aside from my photography I’ve also been involved in a short film – Finding Bo.

It was originally supposed to be primarily about mountain hares, but favourite hare Bo caught Director Rachel’s imagination and the film was based around my relationship with Bo as well as my love of wildlife in general. Rachel and her team at Scotica Film have done a fabulous job even if it is uncomfortable watching myself on screen. The debut was at the Montrose Land x Sea Festival where it won the best Scottish Film Award. Hopefully it’ll be available sometime soon on a streaming service so I can share with everyone.

As a result of the film, I’ve written articles for both Sidetracked Magazine and Outdoor Photography, both detailing a memorable experience I have had photographing mountain hares. They are available in the magazines.

So that’s a wrap on 2024. Many thanks to all who read this blog, have joined me for workshops, purchased from my Etsy store ,or followed me on social media, and to all the other guides (James, Pete, Peter, Andy, Kev) I hang out with on the hare hill and elsewhere – it’s very much appreciated. I look forward to meeting and interacting with more of you in 2025.

If you’d like to join me for a workshop or photography guiding experience in 2025 please do get in touch. I am offering guiding not only in the Inverness-shire area but also Perthshire and possibly the West Coast during the summer.