Hiking in the Highlands!

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Hiking in the Highlands!


We set off at 2:00am in the morning and arrived at a secret site up in the Highlands of Scotland at around 9:00am. Our only target was Ptarmigan. I had dipped this last year, after a hard and long climb up a mountain, in the snow! We were feeling strangely optimistic about this adventure, as lots of the snow had melted, meaning that the Ptarmigan should hopefully stand out. Enroute to the site, I spotted loads of Red Grouse. As soon as we arrived in the car park, the first bird we saw was a Red Grouse feeding in the grass only a few metres away.


After scanning the boulder scree on the mountain from the car park, I couldn't initially spot anything that stood out as Ptarmigan. I then started scanning the few patches of snow. Suddenly, two white specs caught my eye as one of them moved. They were Ptarmigan! I was ecstatic, and immediately got a digiscoped image of them. The pair were showing well, however they were extremely distant. They were a lifer for me and finally seeing them nearly a year after climbing the exact same mountain was amazing. We then decided to climb up the mountain again! Hoping for some better and closer views. I was better equipped this time, with better weather and my new walking sticks, we began our hike. 


At first, all we saw were Red Grouse, but then, we noticed a large raptor flying down the mountain. At first, I thought it was an eagle, but then as it landed, I realised it was just a Buzzard. The trek this time felt much easier than last time, with the only pain I had being in my ankles, and this was only a mild pain. However, the higher up we got, the harder the climb began to get. There were many Mountain Hares as we got higher up, however they were quite skittish and ran off as soon as they spotted us.


After what felt like forever, we climbed the final steep slope. Relieved, I took a short break to catch my breath, before getting back up and walking towards the summit. As we were walking along, we scanned the boulders looking for any white dots that stood out. Since there were so many hikers up the mountain, we were worried that the Ptarmigan could've gotten disturbed by now. We began scanning thoroughly at the location they were supposed to be. Suddenly my heart skipped a beat! Right in front of us, probably less than 30m away, were a pair of Ptarmigan. They were very well camouflaged, and I only noticed the black eyestripe of the male, and then soon after spotted the female behind him. 


The Ptarmigan were very tame, seemingly being unbothered by us or the hikers. I was very pleased to see them so close, after being in this exact same spot last year and seeing none. As well as the tame Ptarmigan, there were at least two pairs of Ravens flying overhead.

Me next to the Ptarmigan

I stationed myself on a patch of grass along the icy steep slope and took some record shots of the Ptarmigan. They continued to walk into the boulders, but a hiker flushed them, as he walked straight into them. This caused them to fly right overhead, and allowing us to hear their call and view them in flight. They landed out of site, behind a fence. More than satisfied with our views, we decided to descend the mountain.


As we were walking back down the mountain, we spotted the Ptarmigan again, this time even closer to us. Unfortunately, the fence was in the way which meant I couldn't get any great record shots of the birds, however, we managed to make out every little detail of them, including the small red wattle above the male's eye. Not wanting to disturb the Ptarmigan, we continued our descent down the mountain, seeing a few more Ravens and Red Grouse on our way down.

Descending the mountain was more challenging than I expected. The snow was slippery and I was unable to get a good grip. After a lot of hesitation, we finally found out that glissading was the quickest, easiest and most fun method of getting down the steep, icy slopes.

With a few daylight hours left, we decided to try for Golden Eagles at another site. We arrived at around 3:00pm, and after around two hours of scanning, all we saw were Ravens and a few Red Grouse. Even though we didn't see any eagles, we still had a great day!

Overall, it was a brilliant trip with my Scottish boogey bird (Ptarmigan) ticked off!


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