July 2021 - Summer Wildlife in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire

1 Aug

Summer well and truly landed in Deeside and the warm dry weather of June continued right through July until the very end of the month when cooler air bought with it rain and more overcast skies. The mercury topped out just shy of 29oC during our short-tour around Deeside but also dipped to freezing on one evening at the beginning of the month.

The resident female Pine Marten has been putting on a great show in July and really showing the male who’s boss!

We have had a fabulous month showing guests around Deeside (and further afield) day in, day out from 1st to the 31st on the month. Our wildlife highlights were plentiful and diverse, from Red Squirrels to Scotch Argus butterflies, Twinflower, Goshawks and Ospreys, Ptarmigan, some incredible coastal experiences with thousands of seabirds on the cliffs, clouds of terns and mobs of seals loafing, not to mention some of the local wildlife specialities including Pine Martens, Dark-bordered Beauty Moth, Northern Damselfly, Nordic Moonwort and Creeping Ladies Tresses orchid to name but a handful.

A pair of Ptarmigan hunker down in the boulders

At this time of year we start to notice a change in activity. Many breeding birds go very quiet, in fact some are done and heading back south already, such as Cuckoo and even Ring Ouzel. Whilst the weather may appear summery the first signs of autumn are also evident with a small migration of waders heading south (mostly birds that have failed breeding). Later in July the first rainfalls for a while also meant perfect conditions for fungi to grow.

Despite this Arctic Tern having finished breeding it still decided to come and shout at us on the Ythan Estuary

We have even been able to introduce a number of people to the delights of moth trapping with guests experiencing up to 1000 moths in a morning – quite overwhelming in many cases. The diversity of colour, pattern, shape and size is quite remarkable in this group of insects and Deeside is an incredibly important area for several rare species.

Dark-bordered Beauty, one of the UK’s rarest moths and found in Upper Deeside

Whilst the calm, hot conditions have been great for exploring we have also noticed the extremely low river levels and more concerningly the exceptional warm water temperatures which can cause real problems for species like Salmon (despite looking we have only seen Salmon parr).

This bull Orca was a massive highlight of our Shetland tour

Further afield we have had an incredible time guiding across Scotland from Argyll to Shetland. Once again the highlights have been spectacular from exploring Scottish rainforest in Argyll to the sub-arctic fellfields on Shetland, Orca, Otter, close-up Puffins, thousands of Gannets and bizarre Sawflies, to name but a few.