One off the bucket list

I have been to the Caledonian forest a fair amount of times and have never witnessed even a slight sighting of a Crested Tit. In fact my luck always seemed to be out, this time last year my wife and I took a wee hurl through the Cairngorms and I rubbered a trip to Loch Garten in favour of a trip to the Insh Marshes. On getting home as I was posting my pics, there was a post by someone that had been at the loch and had seen umpteen Cresties. Gutted!!!! In November myself and a pal took a run up and even though we had a great day, no Cresties were forthcoming.

Nature Nuts are hell bent on providing different tours for different needs and I will provide, if I can, the tour you are looking for. So it was this thought I put up my latest outing to see the Cresties, more for my own needs possibly, but I'm always willing to share an experience.

So my wee group and I headed out from Blair on a beautiful crisp blue-skied morning. The temperature guage was reading -4 but with no wind it didn't feel too bad!!! As we were driving towards Dunkeld we encountered our first sighting of deer, Fallow on this occassion and a couple of cracking Harts and an albino hind.

So, on we drove spotting umpteen buzzards on the way. The thing that blew us all away was the scenery, totally majestic especially as we follwed the Garry up towards the pass at Drumochter. Just prior to reaching Loch Garry, we saw upwards of 100 Red Stags at Trinafour all sitting basking in the heat!! It was -7 at this point, apparently the shepherds up here don't have to castrate the lambs........things just fall off!! Anyway, the light was magnificent and the hills as we drove into the Spey valley were just mind blowing in their beauty.

We duly arrived at our destination and were met with a multitude of photographers, a mini paparazzi tbh, all hunting down the bird equivalent of Lady Di!!! To be honest the first thing that I really appreciated was this......

........overlooking Loch Garten towards the Cairngorms, simply gorgeous.

Back to the photographers, I ended up cracking away to a few of them, really lovely bunch and ended up getting more business for my Marten hide and beaver tours, brilliant as I have to spread the love for these beasties. On enquiry, the cresties had been showing quite regular, or at least one of them had. Hey, you know what's coming........nothing but Coal tits, Blue tits and Chaffies. Not that I don't appreciate these lovely wee birds but not what I or my guests had come to see.

I have through the years learned a wee bit of patience, more so regarding nature, less so in every day life. Sitting by the river bank waiting for beavers, otters or whatever else may appear has fine-tuned me to just wait and be rewarded for the effort. It doesn't always come to fruition but I generally find that if you just sit, nature will come to you, and so it came to pass. We were blessed with sightings of this wonderful wee bird, the Crested Tit. Apologies for poor pics but I'm chuffed as hell with them

We were well chuffed but decided to move to another area as we were all suffering from frozen feet and needed a wee bit of heating up. On arriving, this .........

then this cheeky wee woody only yards from us

We then had a multitude of Coal tits and chaffies before we got our final sightings of the Cresties before leaving....

On our way back we took a few pics of the Cairngorms. I love this one showing the "Ghru" in the middle, Cairngorm to the left and beyond that Ben McDuie and to the right Braeriach and Carn Toul

Heading south back through Drumochter with the sun shining on Sgairneach Mhor and the Sow of Atholl was pretty awe-inspiring and I must admit I was really itching to be on the peaks

Further south our first sighting of snow covered Beinn a'Ghlo and it's 3 peaks, Carn Liath, Braigh Coire Chruinn-bhalgain and Carn nan Gabhar (pronunciation and meaning in order, byn a gloe (hill of mist), kaarn lee-a (grey hill), corrie kroon vaalakan (love this one; hill of blisters) kaarn nan gower (hill of the goats).

Just slightly to the south and east we have the Iconic hill that is totally associated with Pitlochry, Ben y-Vrackie

And it was in that direction we made our way home via the south end of the Ben, over the Moullin moor and through bonny Strathardle. I was actually taken by surprise when we came across this wee herd of Red deer

We stopped in at the marten hide on the way back, changed batteries on the camera and rebaited the area. Quite a lot of squirrel activity on the camera which I will share at a later date. Anyway, it was on travelling home it was pointed out that we had seen Red and Fallow deer but no Roe. I couldn't have my group going home without feeling happy so I took a wee diversion back towards Dunkeld and fell in with this herd of Roe deer.

So, a relatively successful day finished off with a pair of Goldeneye drakes posturing and displaying to a pair of ducks, quality :-)