I went back to Aviemore in 2015 for a week-long stay – giving me more opportunities to photograph the Ospreys at Rothiemurchus as well as time out-and-about looking for other photo opportunities in the area.
This time I went with my friend George, and we headed up to Scotland a few days before the official tour began. We went to Chanonry Point in the Moray Firth in search of dolphins (sadly we didn’t see any), to Lochindorb looking for Red Grouse, and general trips around the Aviemore area.
But the main reason to go for a second year was to add to my images of Ospreys. I had images in mind that I wanted to achieve and hoped this longer stint in the hides would help. But wildlife photography is unpredictable – and so it is with Ospreys; you can be spoilt with plenty of dives in a session, or have a session with no dives. We had some of both. Unfortunately, when we did get plenty of dives the Osprey would take off in the wrong direction, away from the camera. Normally, a bird will take off into the wind, but the Osprey seemed quite happy to take off in any direction on this occasion!
It wasn’t all bad though, and we managed plenty of shots of diving Osprey. The cool morning light on this trip also gave the images a little something different, which I preferred to the sunlit images from the previous year. In fact, the early morning misty atmosphere was just beautiful, as this image of a Great Grey Heron shows.
All in all it was another fantastic trip. You just can tire from seeing Ospreys dive just metres in front of you; but tire you can from the 3am starts every day, with a short nap in the middle of the day before going back for evening sessions! We were all running on adrenalin, but completely shattered by the end of the week.
