Isle of Jura Wildlife

So, I am just back from a wonderful 4 days photographing wildlife on the remote Isle of Jura. It took a three hour drive and two ferries to get there but was so worth the effort.

It was such a great trip I thought it was a good opportunity to (re)launch my YouTube channel with a video of the wildlife encounters that I had there. This is a brand new venture for me and I would love to share more wildlife sightings in Scotland through this outlet. Let me know what you think and if you can like, subscribe and comment on the video as this really helps me to get noticed by the algorithm that rules YouTube.

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Jura is and island on the west coast of Scotland and it is known as being an island with lots of deer, estimates online say about 6000-7000 but the head stalker for the estate there told me more like 5000 as the Scottish government has encouraged them to reduce numbers. We (my wife and I) were certainly not disappointed and had several great sightings of red deer up and down the island every day.

There was one stag we came across which was particularly relaxed and tolerant allowing me to approach from different angles showing how different shots of the same subject can be when you change the light angle – same time of day for these shots and they are all full colour not black and white.

Another goal of mine was to get some more environment shots showing the deer in their habitat and showcasing the scenery of the island.

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There were lots of nice birds around too including a couple of views of Male Hen Harriers.

In fact talking of birds, one amazing sighting was from the ferry on the way out when a small falcon briefly shadowed the boat as it was crossing from Jura to the mainland or perhaps another island. It was a Merlin, our smallest bird of prey.

Another bird we had quite a few sightings of was the impressive and mighty White Tailed Eagle. This mighty bird seems to be crowding out the Golden Eagle on Jura.

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Lastly we spent a decent amount of time looking for the tell tail sign of otter typically the V shaped wake in the water and the disappearing tail.

We had sightings of Otter most days but it was after researching and scouting locations that we were able to have a truly sustained sighting of about and hour and 45 minutes with a mother and cub.

After a while we got to know each individual and start being able to predict their behaviour like where they would come ashore. This led to a sustained photography session with fill the frame shots at 700mm with both the Mum and Pup.

This was my highlight of our 4 days on the Island and please do watch the YouTube video above to see some of the video footage I was able to get.

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There were other sea mammals around of course including Common Seals. The sunrise providing particularly good light one morning which was good fun to capture the seals hauled out on rocks.

Jura is a great island for sustained wildlife encounters, if you haven’t been I encourage you to visit. I am available to provide bespoke wildlife and photography guiding services on Jura and other Scottish Islands so do get in touch if you are interested in this.