Wildlife Viewing

In a landscape this rugged you'd expect to find plenty of wildlife and Lake District National Park has plenty to see.

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Wildlife Viewing Details

In a landscape this rugged you'd expect to find plenty of wildlife and the Lake District National Park has plenty to see. In the woodlands and forests throughout the park you can spot wood warbler, woodpecker, nuthatch, and a host of other woodland birds, while in the fells you can see Peregrine falcon, raven and ring ouzel. The lakes are a magnet for resident and migratory birds including osprey, whooper swan, grebe, golden eye, pochard, widgeon and tufted duck. If you're lucky you might also spot an otter in one of the lakes or a kingfisher on a river bank branch. Along the seashore, and especially just outside the park boundary near [St. Bee's Head](https://www.rspb.org.uk/discoverandenjoynature/seenature/reserves/guide/s/stbeeshead/), you can spot plenty of shore birds and one of England's largest nesting colonies of sea birds. Similarly, the [Leighton Moss Nature Reserve](http://www.rspb.org.uk/discoverandenjoynature/seenature/reserves/guide/l/leightonmoss/index.aspx) in the Arnside and Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, just south of the Lake District National Park, offers fantastic opportunities to see some of the best of Britain's wetland and coastal wildlife. Here are just some of the places where you can almost guarantee seeing something that will make your day. In Martindale, a secluded valley near Ullswater, you can spot red deer and possibly even the smaller roe deer if you're alert. In the rutting season you might well hear the bellowing of the red deer before you spot them. Fell ponies are mountain and moorland ponies that originate in Cumbria and once carried supplies of lead, slate, copper and iron ore in a capacity of packhorses. This breed has roamed the Lake District's northern fells for years, wild and free and always delighting those that they encounter on their travels. The ponies roam across the fells, thanks to the careful management techniques of the hill farmers and are always highly photogenic subject matter for the cameras. One of the prized animals to spot is the endangered red squirrel. You stand a good chance of seeing them in the forests near Keswick and Penrith but also in the southern and south eastern Lake District where their populations are holding on despite the threat of the invading grey squirrel - a species introduced to the UK in the 19th century from the United States. While the sighting of any wild animal can never be guaranteed, you stand a good chance of seeing red squirrels at the Forestry Commission's Whinlatter Visitor Centre to the west of Keswick, where remote cameras beam live images from nests and feeders to the centre. The disused railway line between Keswick and Threlkeld, now a popular footpath and cycleway, also offers good squirrel spotting opportunities. At Grasmere, the National Trust's Allan Bank is a regular haunt for reds while further east, at the Haweswater Hotel and the Shap Wells Hotel, staff entice reds to the lawns outside their dining rooms to the delight of guests. Ospreys were extinct in England until the early 2000s but have since made a remarkable recovery thanks to careful conservation work. Arriving in the Lake District from East Africa to breed in March and April, before heading south again between mid-August and mid-September, ospreys have now bred successfully and returned to three accessible locations where there are viewing facilities: - Foulshaw Moss, Witherslack managed by Cumbria Wildlife Trust - Esthwaite Water, Hawkshead, where the Osprey Safari provides a boat to see the birds and other wildlife on the lake. - Bassenthwaite Lake. Here, the Lake District Osprey Project - a consortium of the Lake District - National Park Authority, Forestry Commission and Royal Society for the Protection of Birds - provides telescopes and knowledgeable staff volunteers as well as webcam viewing online and back to the Whinlatter Visitor Centre.

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