WELCOME TO THE SPEYSIDE WILDLIFE BLOG

When I was a small boy, growing up in the Borders, my father and I shared a passion for geography, maps in particular. We had in the house an enormous Reader’s Digest Atlas, green and gold and to me it was a door to endless adventures. We used to pour over this together exploring landscapes in far off lands, following mighty rivers, looking at place-names and it was on one of these explorations that I “discovered” Bhutan. I remember asking my father what he knew about Bhut

“There we were, at the summit of Picotta – a mountain to the north of Silves in The Algarve, Southern Portugal – the sun was beaming down and we were sweaty with the effort of getting there. The perspiration, I knew, could be to our advantage. I shoved my hands into my armpits and then held them out steady in front of me, much to the disgust of some! Almost immediately the large, dark butterfly I had seen when we arrived alighted on my hand. It was a Two-tailed Pasha, one

Catalunya, Cataluñia or Catalonia? That’s the question! Can you place it on a map? It’s the north-east corner of Spain, or the Iberian Peninsula. Squacco Heron (Duncan Macdonald) When thinking of Catalunya then maybe Barcelona springs to mind first. A lively, energetic metropolis with connections to the artist Gaudi, the famous Las Ramblas and of course, one of the greatest football teams on the planet! Maybe one thinks of Salvador Dali, the great surrealist, or the family ho

Asa Wright Centre (Roy Atkins) “Standing on the Asa Wright veranda with coffee in hand as you watch hummingbirds, honeycreepers, euphonias and other wonderful birds is such a delightful way to start the day. As people got the hang of the regular species coming to the feeders, it became calmer too and a few days into the holiday we were enjoying the feeling of knowing the common ones and picking out the more unusual as and when they appeared, or scanning the forest for Bearded