Scotland in Style 5/10/2025-5/20/2025

The Caledonian Forest

Any account of a trip to the Highlands of Scotland has to begin with the weather: “‘Twas gray and misty on the moor….” We’ll abide by the convention—but the details were delightfully different for us. From start to finish, our explorations took place beneath a startlingly blue sky, with equally surprising temperatures rising as high as the beautiful 70s. Yes, this was Scotland.

The single exception was the dim, foggy morning we spent at Culloden. The cleverly presented exhibits in the small museum and, even more so, the informative guided tour of the vast battlefield introduced us to the political intricacies of the Jacobite Rising and its bloody end here. Our damp weather echoed the dismal conditions in which that battle was fought in April 1746, and the Skylarks that trilled and whistled so determinedly high above us in the fog were no doubt the descendants of birds that had sung over the gory battlefield almost three hundred years ago. In those conditions, it was eerily easy for us to imagine the events of that horrible day, events that set the course of the United Kingdom for centuries to come. 

Our early morning strolls through the woods of Anagach, hardly five minutes from the door of our historic Grantown hotel, were more peaceful. We were introduced to—or renewed our acquaintance with—some of the region’s most abundant forest birds, from the sweet-voiced Willow Warbler to the sneaky Eurasian Wren. European Robins, Dunnocks, and Comomn Chaffinches were our constant companions on these short pre-breakfast walks, one or the other of which also featured Eurasian Treecreepers, Eurasian Bullfinches, and frantic little Coal Tits.

Farther afield, visits to the firths and lochs in the Inverness area were equally exciting. Pink-footed Geese, the last still lingering from the winter, welcomed us to the RSPB’s Udale Bay Reserve, and at Chanonry Point, just across the water from massive Fort George, we experienced such genuine seabirds as Common Murres and Black-legged Kittiwakes alongside a migrant Northern Wheatear and a small flock of Red Knots. The famous Black Isle pod of Bottle-nosed Dolphins completed the scene.

Birders don’t have to be single-minded, and some of our most memorable sightings took place on outings to cultural and historic sites. We watched in delight as a Hawfinch—a rare species for the area—crushed sunflower seeds at the feeders of Cawdor Castle, a still-inhabited medieval stronghold associated, most famously, with the historical and the literary Macbeth; overhead, here as so many other places, Red Kites soared overhead, sepulchral maws at the ready. Another great fortress, the evocative ruin of Urquhart Castle, on the shores of Loch Ness, was haunted not by Banquo’s ghost but by busy Barn Swallows and House Martins. An afternoon at the excellent Highland Folk Museum showed us another, less exalted side of life in this challenging part of the world, while we were serenaded by Eurasian Blackbirds, Great and Blue tits, and European Goldfinches in the heat of the day.

For the most part, we kept extremely humane, almost unbirderly, hours, leaving the hotel after breakfast and returning in time for a break of an hour or more before gathering again for an evening checklist review and dinner. The few exceptions included a quick pre-breakfast trip onto Dava Moor, just a few minutes away, where we witnessed the weird spinning displays of Black Grouse, their fluffy white undertails and excited bubbling songs giving them away even at a distance. While these faintly desperate males were still dancing for a chance, the moor’s Red Grouse (recently re-split from the Willow Ptarmigan, making this a species endemic to Scotland) were already ushering small chicks through the heather.

We also had two extended evenings, each dedicated to an experience possible nowhere but Scotland. After dinner in our hotel one night, we enjoyed an informative and entertaining whisky tasting conducted by our genial barman. And on another evening, we drove into the countryside to attend another ritual degustation. It took some hours in the comfortable blind—in reality the windows of a converted café, complete with counters, stools, and a heater—but finally, right at the predicted stroke of eleven, the western horizon still alight, a European badger, a life mammal for all of us, trotted in to guzzle its daily peanut butter; the crumbs of the feast were tidied up by a bank vole and a wood mouse. We were impressed by how different the European badger, an apparently gentler, more readily frugivorous forest-dweller, was from the American badger: longer-legged, more streamlined, and, at least from a safe position behind the glass of our blind, less intimidating than the squat, rather terrifying beast of American fields and prairies. 

While much of our time was spent at lower elevations, at the sea and along the banks of Scotland’s wild rivers, it’s not called the Highlands for nothing. In the enchanting forested National Nature Reserve of Craigellachie, we walked up a rocky trail to a lovely small lake, on the way enjoying a dramatically black and white male Pied Flycatcher and, eventually, getting views of a Wood Warbler singing its silvery trill in the birch and conifer woods. The little loch itself was home to a female Common Goldeneye; for most American birders, sighting that handsome duck is a wintertime pleasure, but goldeneye are common breeders in the forests of the Highlands, where they nest in woodpecker holes and the stumps of broken tree limbs.

Craigellachie preserves almost exactly a square mile of forest. Cairngorms National Park, the largest in the UK, covers nearly 1,750 square miles, centered on the eponymous mountains, which rise more than 4,000 feet above the sea. On our visit, unfortunately, the funicular to the promisingly named Ptarmigan Top was still undergoing its annual maintenance. We picnicked in the sun at the bottom of the Cairn Gorm (two words!) ski area, listening to the songs of Chaffinches and Willow Warblers while a female Ring Ouzel gathered food to carry to an unseen nest beneath the funicular line. 

Good company and good birding made this trip fly by. On our last full day afield, chillier and windier than any that had come before, we found ourselves atop the seabird cliffs of Troup Head. We perched in the grass as tens of thousands of birds whirled and fluttered just below us. Troup Head is home to the largest colony of Northern Gannets on the British mainland, with nests within what seemed like arm’s reach of the cliff edge. Thousands of Black-legged Kittiwakes huddled on the ledges, and chunky Northern Fulmars soared in front of the sheer rock faces. Common Murres were everywhere all at once, in the air and on the water and massed in dense clumps atop the rocks. One grassy patch concealed the nest of a pair of Atlantic Puffins, comically earnest as they went in and out of their burrow. Skylarks overhead, Corn Buntings and Yellowhammers on the fencelines, and Linnets bounding along above the wildflowers made the scene only more captivating.

Our entire tour, in fact, was captivating. The birds, the landscapes, the wealth of historic sites all contributed to a uniquely rich experience, one John Poyner and I were privileged to share with a congenial and keenly curious group. I look forward to getting to take to the field with all of you again soon—though I think you’ll agree that our time together in Scotland this spring may prove hard to beat.

• Rick Wright

For detailed lists from each locality we visited, consult our full eBird report: ebird.org/tripreport/364385.

ITINERARY:

May 11: From Inverness to Grantown. Walk through Anagach Woods to River Spey. 

May 12: Optional pre-breakfast walk in Anagach Woods. Black Isle: North Kessock and  Chanonry Point. Udale Bay, Cromarty, and Fairy Glen.

May 13: Optional pre-breakfast walk in Anagach Woods. Culloden Moor Battlefield. Loch Garten. Old Spey Bridge. 

May 14: Optional pre-breakfast walk in Anagach Woods. Dava Moor. Lochindorb. Loch Ruthven.

May 15: Craigellachie. Cairn Gorm ski area. Highland Folk Museum.

May 16: Optional post-breakfast walk in Anagach Woods. Cawdor Castle. Speyside Wildlife badger blind. 

May 17: An Slochd. Findhorn Valley. Whisky tasting. 

May 18: Dava Moor grouse lek. Loch Flemington. Fort George. Inverness cathedral. Urquhart Castle and Loch Ness.

May 19: Maggieknockater. Troup Head. Pennan.

May 20: From Grantown to Inverness.