Scozmo's Photery

We moved home to Scotland in 2022 and I immediately started seeing different birds in the garden, on our new patch and out on my walks in the wilds.

Backwater reservoir has become a favourite walk of mine and a few people told me to keep an eye out for Eagles “keep looking up” they’d say. When I was on some of those walks, people would ask if I’d seen the shrike!?

Eventually I also heard that Crossbills could be seen up here too so, I started looking. I’d never seen any of the birds mentioned above but meanwhile I had plenty to keep me occupied.

On one of our very first walks up alongside the reservoir in January of 2023, we stopped to chat with a couple walking back down towards the car park, both wore binoculars and told us they’d seen nothing interesting at all, neither had we, so far….

We went our separate ways and about 100 yards further on, Jo said “What’s that?” We could hear a bird call and looked all around us until we spotted her, right in front of us at the tip of a young pine tree, a beautiful yellow female crossbill, a first for both of us.

She stayed on that pine, glancing down at us now and again, for around a minute but it felt like ages, enough for a good few photographs.

Look at that glance down at us, making sure we’re no threat.

So our first ever sighting of a Crossbill was a real beauty in my opinion, she almost posed for us but, I was hooked.

My neck was on a 360 gimbal after that but, no more to be seen, however; I had to go back.

My next sighting wasn’t until February.