A Holiday On Mull (November 2025)
15th April 2026
My winter season effectively begins in October and runs through to the end of March, so half the year. Running photography workshops for crested tits, mountain hares and red squirrels fill much of the work, so it was nice to start the season with a trip out for red deer.
Or it would have been, had we not arrived when the stalkers were out, and the deer were sensibly distancing themselves from the guns. Couple that with atrocious weather, and I decided it would be better to visit the crested tit site, as they were almost guaranteed to show. More on this presumption later.
Two thousand shots later, and my client was overjoyed with his first winter workshop with me, and judging by his images, he captured some fabulous images of the "cresties".
Mountain hare workshops followed, with varying levels of success. Strong winds hampered some days, but that's part of life in the Scottish Highlands in late autumn. And both the crested tits and red squirrels were on fine form for my clients.
And while searching for ptarmigan with a visiting friend, we found a mountain hare in a dusting of snow. It looked magical. Possibly my favourite images of a mountain hare.
I headed south for Christmas with family and friends, and was soon back in the Highlands, checking on the cresties ready for the workshops planned. Only I couldn't find any. Very weird.
I told Andy (Howard), as it's his site, and he initially put it down to me only spending an hour looking. So he went up, and also failed to find any! Before Christmas we had at least five birds visiting, then after the festive break, none!
Andy called around the local guides, and we weren't alone with the crested tits going AWOL. And even some locals who are fortunate to have them visit garden feeders mentioned their disappearance.
As they were still showing at a public location, we used that for a few workshops, but compared to the usual site, it was (to us), disappointing. The clients still left with images of the crested tits, but the special shots like backlit, weren't attainable, and as a result, I ended up cancelling some workshops, which I can ill afford to do.
Thankfully the mountain hares were pretty good, though with fewer numbers of red deer around to nibble the grasses, getting clear views of the hares was a struggle at times. And the hares seemed to be moving around a lot, so finding them consistently was sometimes time consuming.
Though as is often the case with winters, we got some snow early in January, and that made for some fabulous conditions on the hills, if not somewhat hard for walking.
The end of January saw me take a break of sorts from guiding, when friends from England were up here. And after a couple of failed attempts, I finally managed to introduce Judith to some ptarmigan. That was a treat!
With the cresties still missing, we were very grateful to James (Roddie) who had managed to find some elsewhere, and set up a temporary site which he allowed us all to make use of. This at least allowed me to take some clients to see them, though for some reason my February was a quiet one. It's usually my busiest winter month, but was the quietest this winter.
Thankfully March proved to be much busier, with several multi-day workshops. We visited the new crestie site, saw mountain hares, red squirrels (both at the usual site, and at Alvie), snow buntings, red deer, red grouse and more.
And I helped Karen (Miller) out with a couple of her clients, as she was struggling with health issues. Hopefully she's on the mend now, and will soon be back to full fitness.
The final "winter" workshop of the year was actually a tuition session with a local friend who needed help with techniques for capturing birds in flight, and also a bit of post-processing. It helped that he has the same camera as me, so no research needed on other cameras.
So the winter was definitely of two halves. The first full of promise of the usual action from the usual suspects.
And the second half, of battles to find crested tits, cancelling workshops, trying to substitute subjects for those clients who were happy to do so and both helping out, and being helped out by local friends.
I wish to thank Andy, James and Karen for their help through the winter, and also to all the clients, new and existing, for their company over the winter period. Let's hope the next season is as interesting, but that the cresties are back to their usual reliable selves...
