As most of my posts will be about wildlife in Norfolk/Suffolk, I thought I would add something a little bit different and write a blog about our honeymoon back in February.
We spent a week in a beautiful little cottage just over the border into Scotland, it was the perfect blend of luxury and wildlife watching, with a jacuzzi bath, open fire, four poster bed and a wildlife hub that consisted of cctv cameras all over the farm where we could watch badgers, otters and birds come and go as they pleased, there were also several bird feeders outside our front window, with hares and roe deer in the fields that we could watch over breakfast, lunch or tea! We couldn't recommend it highly enough and if you fancy a visit the website is: www.watchbadgers.co.uk
Going wildlife watching in Scotland in February is pretty risky but we could not have been more lucky with the weather, it was bright and sunny every day except for one, when we went to Edinburgh Zoo, and even then it brightened up later on.
On our first proper day we went into Berwick Upon Tweed, we walked along the pier to the lighthouse. We got very excited to see an eider duck, little were we to know that there are loads of them there, so we both went mad taking distant photos of the one we could see!
Matthew had done a little bit of research and had read reports of otters on the other side of the water so we headed over there and it was like the otter was just there waiting for us! He was happily swimming around amongst all the seals, then eventually caught something to eat and dragged it onto a little island to eat it. Was great to see on our first day, especially as I spent a year in 2012 looking for otters and never saw any until Boxing Day (luckily, since then I have had a lot more luck!)
That same day we also visited a sea side village called Eyemouth, being February it was very quiet but we saw loads of eiders here, probably about 50! Including a very pretty eclipse eider and lots of seals too!
We even managed to see some wildlife at Edinburgh Zoo, with a friendly robin taking food from Matthew's hand, but our highlights from that day were of course the pandas and a gorgeous baby koala!
In the evening after our trip to Edinburgh Zoo we took a walk to St. Abbs Head which is a beautiful cliff top walk along the coast, we saw some wonderful wildlife but we were losing the light so we didn't walk too far and a roe deer leapt out in front of us on the way back to the car! We went back the next day for a 4 mile walk, it was probably the best day of the whole week! There were hundreds of guillemots nesting on the cliffs, as well as razorbills out at sea, shags, oyster catchers, curlews, fulmars, a rock pipit, buzzard and one lone gannet flying about, but the highlight had to be the peregrines, they were calling and flying around over head and Matthew saw one stoop to catch some prey, unfortunately I missed it as I was too busy watching the other one! As we neared the end of the route we got very close to a hare that we scared out of some bushes and it ended up sitting on a wall, and we found loads of animal footprints in the mud, including a badger :) A great day and we were home for lunch!
We took it a bit steadier for the next couple of days and visitng Hirsel Country Park and Howick Hall and Gardens looking for red squirrels and hawfinches, we weren't successful with either but we did enjoy lovely views of woodpeckers, goldcrests, bullfinches and roe deer (again), and ate some lovely cake!!
Thanks for reading! If you want to see more of my photos there are some on flickr here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/31291506@N00/sets/72157644828759057/
:)
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