Today was a quiet day so we slept in and had a late breakfast in the cottage. In the afternoon, we visited the nearby Abernethy Forest Loch Garten Osprey Centre run by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Essentially a bird watching house in the middle of a forest, the centre houses a nice display of Osprey history in Scotland and has plenty of viewing windows setup with binoculars and powerful telescopes to observe the native bird life in the forest.

They are particularly focussed on the Osprey at the centre, but also have some scopes setup to observe smaller birds feeding from bird feeders hanging from trees just outside the watch house. Surprisingly, the digital camera was quite happy taking shots through the eyepiece of the telescopes, which was a great way of getting some good magnification shots of the Osprey nest (albeit empty) and bird feeder in action.



On the way back to Aviemore we dropped into the Speyside Heather Garden and Visitor Centre in Skye of Curr, 2 miles SW of Dulnain Bridge where we learned a bit more about Heather (we’d seen plenty of it about this week). While we were there, we tucked in to a bit of Clootie Dumpling for afternoon tea.



Back home for an early night in preparation for the next day's adventure!