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# Punk Rock Birds
- URL: https://tombrewer.co.uk/punk-rock-birds/
- Published: 2025-10-28T20:05:10.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-21T09:32:22.000Z
- Author: Tom Brewer
- Tags: Newsletter, #Migrated-1789982889005, #Import 2026-09-21 09:29

The morning started wet. Proper, Scottish wet. The sort that doesn’t fall so much as hover in the air and soak you from every angle. As John Muir once said, “The rain is falling, but it never falls on us alone; it falls on everything that we love.” It was wet, but beautiful.

![](https://tombrewer.co.uk/content/images/2026/09/0ea51185-a736-4d74-8647-0f486a6022d1_2048x1152-jpeg-1.jpg)

We headed for Loch Garten, the spiritual home of the osprey in Britain. It was here, in the 1950s, that the first returning pair settled after decades of extinction, watched over by volunteers who camped out to guard the nest. By now, the Osprey have long since left their second home here and returned to Africa for the winter, but it is still a jaw-droppingly beautiful place to visit; despite the absence of the star attraction.

![](https://tombrewer.co.uk/content/images/2026/09/969598ca-6977-4387-a0dc-5629aed6c7a5_2048x1152-jpeg.jpg)

The Caledonian pinewoods around the loch are extraordinary. Twisted Scots pines, some centuries old, rise out of carpets of heather and moss. The weather eased as we arrived, and with the shelter of the forest canopy we managed to dodge a few half-hearted showers.

![](https://tombrewer.co.uk/content/images/2026/09/d1b2cc6c-ef80-455c-93b0-c80d1ac53cd2_2048x1365-jpeg.jpg)

Our walk took us on to Loch Mallachie, a place supposedly teeming with wildlife. The forest, we were told, would be “alive with the sounds of nature.” It wasn’t. The only sound was our boots squelching. No red squirrels, no deer, no birdsong. Nothing. Not a sodding thing. Just sound of our fading optimism.

![](https://tombrewer.co.uk/content/images/2026/09/3c83dc7a-3340-4a02-bab4-b47f82d4c831_2048x1152-jpeg.jpg)

Still, the views were enough. The loch mirrored the bruised sky, framed by ridgelines fading into mist. It’s hard to stay grumpy for long in a place like this. I trudged back towards the car park, silently resenting all the camera gear and waterproofs I'd hauled through the forest; enough to make Attenborough’s crew look like they were travelling light.

![](https://tombrewer.co.uk/content/images/2026/09/4023b948-98f6-4548-99dd-6f85bf3f0597_2048x1152-jpeg.jpg)

And then, “Crestie! To your right!” someone called in something between a shout and a whisper. A crested tit, a small, punkish bird with fewer than 2,000 breeding pairs left in the UK flitted onto a nearby branch, posed for hardly 2 seconds, and vanished. I snapped a few frames and hoped I'd managed to capture at least something worth sharing of this split-second encounter with such an apparently rare bird.

![](https://tombrewer.co.uk/content/images/2026/09/e7de9970-1e52-43d3-a913-d594c94c1513_1152x2048-jpeg.jpg)

We ended the day with a cosy dinner in an even cosier pub, the kind with fogged windows, low ceilings, and a log-burning fire. Outside, the rain was back at it, hammering the roof, just in case we’d forgotten where we were.