Brownsea Island is located just off the coast of Poole Harbour in Dorest. Being only 1.5 miles long and 0.75 miles wide. Accessed by the regular ferry from Poole Harbour, Brownsea is accessible to all.

The island is owned by the National Trust Charity with the Northern section (the nature reserve) operated by the Dorset Wildlife Trust. The National Trust keep the island very well maintained, with a visitor centre and other helpful amenities on site. The pathways and slightly off track routes are easy to navigate and offer many view points out to sea.

The mammoth retailer, John Lewis, lease the well known Brownsea Castle under the John Lewis Partnership company. Now a hotel, this is aparently offered to employees of the partnership with years long waiting lists for rooms.

The main attraction

My aim for this short trip was to capture what the Island is probably best known for, the Red Squirrels. It was only a few weeks back that I attempted to find these super quick and smaller relatives of the Grey on the Isle of Wight, unfortunately without success.

It was only a short 25-30 minute trip on the ferry on a beautiful September sun day. You could feel the slight breeze from Autumn approaching but the sun was still fairly high and beating down on the faces of the excited Brownsea Island goers.

I was quick to hop off the ferry and get stuck in, this was my first mistake! I grabbed a map from the visitor centre and planned a route to take me slightly off the main track through the Woodland Walk. Within minutes I saw two Red’s (I’m just going to put little note in here to give context on my excitement - I had never seen a Red Squirrel), as you can imagine I was a little over excited and this was mistake number two!

Grey Squirrels tend to be a little more subdued and obviously slightly larger, so they’re a lot easier to capture, but the Reds… wow - they’re bloody quick! Couple this with my excitement and you can imagine they didn’t hang around for me to take a good shot. I was too noisy, I moved too quickly and I forgot that this was their domain, not mine. I needed to calm down, remember how I’ve approached other wildlife (slowly and with care) and change tact.

I had spent a fair few hours scouring the island from North to South, with only a few glimpses. I decided to go back to the start, sit quietly and accept the fact that this could be a fair few hours wait.

The pay off

Sure enough, along came the Reds. They were moving closer, gaining confidence with me and the other photographers that had now shown up. It wasn’t until towards the end of the day that I really started to find the best light and angles for some really intimate shots, it was incredible watching these little red rockets whizzing between tree branches and jumping over tree logs. Listening out for their tiny scurrying footsteps was the best - my hearing became more acute to the sounds they were making and as soon as I heard the rustle of leaves or a branch swinging back from a recent long jump attempt, I was treated with a long stare from a Red Squirrel. I captured a variety of images of these beautiful animals; feeding on the nuts, staring blankly into open spaces and signature surprised look.

Strange Behaviour

However, what I did notice was some behaviour that I didn’t think these fairly solitary animals would display. I noticed one Red whizzing round a tree trunk, nothing unusual with that you say, and you would be right! Just ten seconds later I noticed another, whizzing behind it, this tuned into a race of course for who could skate around a tree the fastest without getting dizzy. They settled on a branch quite high up in the tree and each took turns in rubbing against each other, even looking like they were kissing at one point, but at the same time it started to look like they were nibbling at each others ears - it lasted just a few minutes and then they split up again! Please don’t judge me on the awful quality of these particular images, it was very low light and extremely high up, so I had to crop quite dramatically. I really wanted to document and share this experience in the hope that someone far more in touch with Red Squirrel behaviour could explain it to me?

The Peacocks…

Okay, they’re beautiful birds but they drove me and the Squirrels nuts… (Sorry, forgive the pun, I try to contain it, but can’t help it).

They were very self-assured and confident, almost borderline arrogant in fact - they would quite happily come along and steel the squirrels food, chasing them wherever they went knowing full well that it would lead to more food. This caused photographic issues as you can imagine, ha!

Peacocks are all over the island along with a huge number of different species of bird that I will eventually come back to photograph too and this along with the deep forest feel and sounds, beautiful sea views and easy walks are what make this island a wildlife paradise!

Thanks for reading about my short experience at Brownsea Island and I hope it’s inspired you to perhaps take a visit too! I’ve provided helpful links below to make your trip a little easier and links to the wildlife photography page on this site - limited prints are also available.