Another Scotland Trip - Part 4 - Culbin Forest, Spey Bay and More Osprey!

So the Day 7 our last full day. We split up for the first part of the day, Jo & Jimmy were going fishing and we fancied a walk in Culbin Forest.

The weather was brilliant and Culbin Forest is fantastic, the trees are not so dense that you can't see anything. As first time visitors we decided to do the easy to follow 99 Trail and go to the tower that takes you up over the forest. As is usual when walking in a forest you can hear a lot but see little until we stopped for a coffee at the old gravel pond, here we had sightings of Crested-tit, Willow Warbler,

Mallard, Woodpigeon, Robin, Rook and Crow along with plenty of Butterflies. We carried on to the tower and made the climb up to be rewarded with some great views:

After another coffee and a chat with some really friendly natives we headed on. We now started seeing more birds (eventually!) but wasn't able to pet the camera on them. A fleeting glimpse of a couple of Crossbill followed by Bullfinch, Long-tailed Tit, a Siskin, Chaffinch, Swallow, Martins and more Crested Tit. Just a brilliant walk, we loved it!

So we now headed over to Spey Bay and met up with Jo & Jimmy again (They didn't catch anything by the way!) We managed a couple of Common Tern to add to the list here. Again there were Merganser and Goosander about, but the highlight was another Osprey, how lucky are we! This time successfully catching a fish but losing it to a crow!

So after all the excitement we went for a bit of a walk, collecting out first Whimbrel of the year:

So that was pretty much it for the day.

Day 8 and off home, with a quick visit to out secret Osprey on the way: