School of Birding (April '25) - Class Six dismissed!

STOP PRESS - Due to a cancellation, we have two places up for grabs on our November School of Birding! Email me at nazemark-at-yahoo.com (replacing -at- with @) to book your place..... 

White-tailed Eagle, Lochindorb

At the end of March I was back up in Scotland for our sixth School of Birding, which began on the 1st April and ended on the 7th. Based at the Grant Arms Hotel in Grantown-on-Spey as ever, Simon and I couldn't quite believe the extended forecast - sunshine all week?! - but that's exactly what came to pass...

A lovely team (of course - as usual!) were blessed with blue skies throughout, and we could count the clouds we encountered throughout the whole week on one hand - while we usually have a certain amount of decent weather, class six were subject to an unprecendented treat. All of our outdoor sessions were thus a relaxed pleasure, and it was hard to force ourselves back in time for classroom sessions and dinner...

Red Kite, Osprey

The birds? Excellent, as always. All our key spring target species - Crested Tits, Golden and White-tailed Eagles, Slavonian Grebes, Black Grouse, seaducks, Black-throated Divers, Goshawks, Merlins, Crossbills, etc - were enjoyed (and mostly at prolonged, close quarters), and everyone went home suitably fulfilled and hopefully armed with a great many more skills with which to enjoy their birding journeys.

Bar-tailed Godwits, nest-building Crested Tit

Big thanks to Zeiss Birding for their continued support - once again, our class enjoyed unlimited access to a range of brilliant binoculars, 'scopes and thermal imagers, and appreciated their goodie bags, as well as exclusive discounts on all the above. 

Goosander, Wheatear