HIGHLANDS and the EAST COAST

SAT 2 MARCH – SAT 9 MARCH 2024

PRICES: from £1595pp

Early Birder Prices from £1395pp (subject to availability). Contact us before booking! No single supp. Full details and a Trip Report are on our website. Please read FIELD NOTES on page 9.

This late winter holiday combines favoured birding areas with some new and exciting sites. With two nights away on the east coast, this gives us a superb opportunity to fully explore rural and coastal Aberdeenshire, featuring some of the best birding areas in Scotland. Our coastal birding will focus heavily on waders and wildfowl, with a good amount of time spent seawatching. We have excellent chances of finding our own rarities and will build a healthy birdlist from the mountains down to the sea. We will spend time exploring Royal Deeside too, a great birding area with rich pinewoods, stunning rivers, and glens with the Winterwatch site of Mar Lodge right at its heart.

TTop local targets include Capercaillie, Black Grouse, Crested Tit and Golden Eagle, with local Dippers near nest sites and Goosander and Goldeneye on the rivers. Local goose flocks often contain migrant birds and we are vigilant for stray Bean, White-fronted, Snow or Ross's amongst the commoner Pink-feet and Greylags.

In Aberdeenshire, we have time to explore, working a good selection of favoured harbours and bays, with journeys between the sites that pass through mixed open land favoured by finches, waders and a farmland birds. This whole coastline is massively under-watched, with very few resident birders. We have excellent chances of rarities, this being a good time for White-billed Diver, King Eider and rare gulls. Offshore we should find good numbers of Scoter, Divers and Auks, with the bonus of Purple Sandpiper and Turnstone. We return west through mixed farmland, birding near the River Dee and around the previous Winterwatch site of Mar Lodge. With luck we may pick up Scottish or Common Crossbills, Goshawk, Golden Eagle and Red Grouse amid stunning scenery.

We look for Ptarmigan and Snow Bunting, using telescopes to locate the birds before walking closer (late snow or heavy melt can make conditions difficult). Local waders should be returning, and Lapwings and Oystercatchers may be displaying in rough pastures.

Our final day may be in Strathspey, dropping down to the Black Isle or perhaps even an extended day over on the west coast, where we look for White-tailed Eagle, Otter and Black-throated Diver. Total species approx. 120.

Combine with:

SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS

Highland Winter Birding (p13), Highlands and the West Coast (p14).