Puffin courtship

Puffin love lasts a lifetime, and when mating couples arrive at their nesting site each year, they renew their pair bond with a heart-swelling display of “billing”, fondly touching and rubbing their colourful bills together. Less romantic teamwork ensues, as they busily build nests in which to raise their pufflings, gathering grass in their beaks and scuttling into their burrows. Sometimes fights break out between neighbours, and the resulting scrap can see puffins opening their mouths wide to threaten each other and even locking beaks in battle in a hilltop tussle. “It’s exciting to watch them arrive at the sea cliffs and begin their courtship,” says Mull’s RSPB officer David Sexton. “The aroma, cacophony and blur of a million seabird wings is an unforgettable assault on the senses.”

• Lunga in the Treshnish Isles, off the Isle of Mull, is a great place to witness courtship, mid-April until early August. Turus Mara runs one of several boat trips to see them

Salmon leaping up waterfalls

Salmon Leaping at Falls of Shin, Scotland. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

That quick flash of silver as a sleek Atlantic salmon takes a flying leap up through a waterfall is hardly less dramatic a sight for the lack of a grizzly paw reaching to swipe one. Propelling themselves up to four times their own length, they may fail many times before ascending to the next section of their incredible upriver journey, from deep off-shore waters as far afield as Greenland and Norway, back to their birthplaces, to breed. A mind-blowing physical and navigational feat.

• See them between September and December in the north-east of England, and Scotland and Wales. Sites include: waterfalls of the River Marteg at Gilfach Nature Reserve in Powys, the Cenarth Falls on the River Teifi, Pembrokeshire, Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales, and Wylam Bridge or Hexham weir on the River Tyne

Fighting wild cattle

Wild white bulls in Chillingham park, Northumberland. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Anyone who’s been unnerved by a bull snorting angrily in their direction will appreciate how fearsome a sight is the clash of two brutes hurling their bulks together in a proper nostrils-flared, horns-out fight. The wild cattle of Chillingham are a 100-strong herd of an isolated, genetically pure breed that live as wild animals on the large Chillingham Castle estate in Alnwick, Northumberland, descendants of wild cattle who are never handled or tamed. Half are bulls, and with no specific rutting season, the naturally aggressive males challenge each other year-round, fighting viciously, occasionally to the death.

• The Cattle Park is open until 29 October and reopens in spring, chillinghamwildcattle.com; Crabtree and Crabtree has wildlife breaks and accommodation in the area.

Rare white deer

Albino red stag on Scottish moorland. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The majestic and ethereal white stag is a magical creature to behold in the wild, not least because many ancient societies, such as the Celts, mythologised them as agents of the otherworld and harbingers of great change. To be lucky enough to glimpse what our forebears considered a mystical beast will send shivers down the spine, especially as only a handful of sightings of white deer – affected by a condition called leucism, which turns the fur white – have been reported in the UK in the last couple of decades. Locations are now usually kept secret to deter poachers who would claim them as trophies.



• Previous sightings have occurred in the New Forest, Forest of Dean and Scottish Highlands. Fallow deer can be naturally white; some of these live in Sherwood Forest, and there’s a herd of white fallow deer at nearby Welbeck

Beavers building dams

A beaver dragging a wooden stick on his dam. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

A beaver comically towing a huge branch in its mouth – like a toddler learning to swim with a long plastic woggle – is one of those definitive animal behaviours that is a joy to tick off the bucket list. The tenacious engineers work so hard ferrying building materials to construct their dams and lodges that watching them can be oddly inspiring – and now is the best time to catch them. “In autumn they harvest branches and shrubs to float back to their feeding piles, for winter,” explains Derek Gow, a farmer and reintroduction specialist who imported a breeding pair in 2006, which has since thrived. “It’s some of their most interesting behaviour, along with tree-felling and building dams.” Beavers were hunted to extinction in this country in the 16th century, and only reintroduced in the last decade, making seeing them in British waters all the more of a privilege.



• England’s only official free living colony resides in the River Otter, Devon. Gow says summer evenings and autumn are the best time to see them. Walk upstream from Otterton Mill, Otterton

A murmuration of starlings

A giant flock of starlings, known as a murmuration near Gretna, Scotland. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Thousands of starlings swirling in the heavens, whose patterns and flow seem to be guided by an invisible force, akin to a giant Etch A Sketch design being traced across the sky, make for one of the most beautiful aerial displays in all of nature. Some murmurations swell to their hundreds of thousands, taking “safety in numbers” to the extreme. The birds use these vast formations to keep warm together and exchange information, while locating sheltered areas in which to roost during winter. The murmuration gradually gathers as small groups of birds join together, eventually twisting and pulsating together as one mass. Many of the starlings seen in the UK in autumn are migrants from cooler climes such as Scandinavia, Russia and the Baltics, boosting numbers further.



• See starling murmurations at various locations from October to December, in early evening just before dark. The RSPB recommends Lincolnshire’s Frampton Marsh, Brighton Pier and Gretna Green in Dumfries and Galloway

Breaching thresher sharks

A thresher shark – so rarely seen breaching in UK waters that no photographs were available Photograph: Bernard Radvaner/Getty Images

A rising fin, the exposed bulging belly, a flipping bulk and whip of tail, then the almighty splash … a breaching shark is a real flashbulb moment. While awe-inspiring basking sharks may be the most obvious bounty for the British shark-watcher, Ali Hood, director of conservation for the Shark Trust, insists that surfacing thresher sharks (which grow up to 7.5 metres long, and have a distinctive scythe-like tail, or caudal fin, which can be as long as its body) are an even more rewarding encounter. Threshers are one of the few species of shark that can jump completely out of the water, and use their tail as a weapon. “Anglers have reported threshers giving spectacular ‘tutorials’, demonstrating just how to catch mackerel,” Hood explains, “with the threshers rounding up and stunning their prey with a whip of their powerful tail, then leaping clear of the water in what can only be one of the most incredible sights in nature – a shark in ‘flight’.”



• Head to the south Devon coast, where the sharks have been spotted from Paignton pier and Brixham. Wildlife safaris are available with Fun Fish Trips

Sea eagles diving for fish

A white-tailed sea eagle near Skye. Photograph: Drew Buckley/Alamy Stock Photo

The colossal sea eagle, or white-tailed eagle, is an astonishing sight when perched still – and truly breathtaking when seen hunting. With a wingspan of up to 2.5 metres, Britain’s largest bird of prey certainly lives up to its nickname of “the flying barn door”. It is at its most impressive when seen soaring above the waves, from where it swoops down to seize thrashing fish in its terrifying talons, tearing into them mid-flight with its vicious-looking curved beak. Though they also hunt rabbits, hares, small birds and even lambs – much to the dismay of the Scottish hillfarmers they rob – and scavenge from other animals, it’s seeing them do what they do best, and what sets them apart from other big birds, that’s the real thrill.

• Around 100 mating pairs can be seen around the Scottish coast, especially around Mull, where they were reintroduced in the 1970s after becoming extinct in the UK. Mull Charters runs wildlife-watching boat trips

Otters feeding – or doing anything else

A European otter mother and cub on Yell, Shetland Islands. Photograph: James Warwick/Getty Images

Spotting otters takes a lot of patience and a fair bit of luck, but seeing our most loveable mammal tumble playfully while unearthing crustaceans or darting below the water for fish is a prize worth pursuing. Otters are one of the nation’s darling species, not just thanks to Tarka and Ring of Brightwater, but because there is a quick intelligence about them, in the way they can use stones as tools, for example, and they seem to have a human-like enjoyment of each other’s company.

Throw in certain behaviours of sea otters in particular, such as the fact they float on their backs and hold hands to avoid floating away, and they become irresistible. “Otters seem to be made out of water, as if they have conjured themselves out of the current and curl of a wave,” says Miriam Darlington, author of Otter Country. “To encounter one fishing or curled sleeping like a pretzel of fur on a mat of seaweed is always thrilling.”

• The Wildlife Trust has a list of riverine and marine spots in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on its website; it suggests lying in wait for otters in a hide. Wild Scotland has an equivalent list, including hides, reserves and safaris

Grey seal pups suckling

A grey seal pup playing at Donna Nook, Lincolnshire. Photograph: incamerastock / Alamy/Alamy

Fluffy newborn seal pups with their shining doleful black eyes could surely win nature’s baby beauty contest, and watching them being tenderly nursed by their mothers is a truly heartwarming sight. The infants snuggle up to their mothers’ plump bodies to suckle for six or seven weeks. If you have time to be there throughout, seeing them mature is a rare privilege. “Their plaintive, babylike cries can be heard, and you see them playing on the rocks and learning to swim in shallow water,” says Billy Shiel, who runs seal-watching trips in the Farne Islands.

• Around 2000 a year are born at Britain’s largest grey seal colony on the Farne Islands. See them between October and January with Billy Shiel’s Farne Island Boat Trips (01665 720308/720316, farne-islands.com/trips/)

• This article was amended on 14 November 2017. The article originally stated that a beaver colony in Devon was the only one of its kind in the UK. It is the only one in England but there are also free living beavers in Scotland, both on the River Tay and in Knapdale, Argyll.

