Scotland 2024 — Ben Hancock-Smith Photography

Back in October I moved up to Scotland’s Flow country (one of the world’s latest UNESCO sites) to volunteer with the RSPB on Europe’s largest blanket bog until mid-August. During my stay I’ve spent most of my free time exploring the area in search of wildlife to photograph, though sometimes I don’t need to travel further than leaving the front door!

One of the most abundant species which I photographed the most in the past couple of months are the Red deer. I had not expected so many and how close they would come to where I was staying, I’ve even had them right outside my window, although the joy of this wore off quite fast as during the rutting season the stags would be loudly roaring all through the night. My main goal was to photograph them rutting, unfortunately despite seeing so many, I only saw stags fighting once and didn’t manage to get close enough in time to get a good photo. Despite this, I am still quite happy with some of the pictures I have taken. I got my favourite shots when it snowed for a few days in mid-November, - the most snow I had ever seen in my life! Although the snow was brief, I was very excited to photograph wildlife in this new setting and am hoping to get some more later in the winter.

Winter is quiet on the bog; however, the coast has some seasonal migrants which I have been focusing on. One species I’ve had the most success with so far, is the Common redshank. Although there are resident populations, they get boosted by migrants from inland Britain along with ones from Scandinavia which are either wintering there or passing through to another destination. So far, all my redshank photos are from Thurso beach, where the birds are fairly tame allowing me to get my first decent photos, with my favourites being the redshanks inflight. Another winter migrant I’ve been trying to photograph are Whooper swans. Coming down from Scandinavia, they winter on lochs near the coast and feed in nearby fields. One morning I drove an hour to a loch I heard had numerous swans, arriving at the crack of dawn to see an empty loch with the last swans flying off. Still determined to get some photos, I drove around to see where they had gone and luckily I found a bunch of them still in a field next to a layby. It was a bit difficult to get any decent shots as there was no cover plus the swans were a bit skittish - however after spending some time there, some swans began to depart. Leaving in small flocks, the field began to empty which allowed me to get some photos of the swans flying away.

Around mid-December it was time to head home for Christmas, but I decided to have a couple stops in Scotland on the journey south. My first stop was for a couple days in the Cairngorms, where I went hiking around some hills in search of Mountain hare. The snow here was quite deep and my feet fell through into ditches a few times. In the end it was all worth it as I came across 3 hares and managed to get a decent shot of one. Although I had hoped to get some better photos of them, I was still happy to see them in a white pelage for the first time. Unfortunately, the second day bought strong winds, so I didn’t stick around the Cairngorms for too long, however I did find some lekking Black grouse (I didn’t photograph them as if I approached so as not to disturb them) and a Crested tit. After that I headed down to Dumfries for the night and in the morning, I set off to photograph Barnacle geese. I had never seen them before, but very quickly saw tons feeding in some fields upon arrival. It was still very windy and quite dark and was hard to get any interesting photos without bothering the geese. Luckily, they were quite active and flying about, so managed to get a small in frame shot of a few flying by a hill, which was my favourite shot of the day. After this I headed south to England, I very much look forward to going back up to Scotland for the rest of winter and especially the spring and summer.