Pete Cosgrove

Pete completed his PhD in ornithology at Aberdeen University in 1995, where his passion for finding and seeing rare birds began. He has been a guide with Heatherlea for nearly 20 years and started by leading trips to the Northern Isles before branching out oversees to specialise in Europe, Africa and the Americas.

Pete is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the practice of Ecology and Environmental Management. In 2014 Pete was awarded the RSPB’s 2014 Nature of Scotland Species Champion Award for his conservation and research work on the endangered freshwater pearl mussel under the auspices of a project entitled ‘Mollusc of the Glen’!

In recent years, Pete has written and published important conservation research papers on relatively poorly known priority bird species such as golden eagle, white-tailed eagle, whimbrel, Grenada dove and West African royal tern and he is currently working on a long-term project on red-throated divers in Shetland.

Pete absolutely loves sharing his knowledge of birds and being a Heatherlea guide, and will be leading for us in Africa and the americas as well as Europe. When not birding Pete likes hill-walking, hill loch fishing, malt whisky and music. He has a particular love of the Cairngorms and was very pleased in 2018 to discover a new breeding bird for the national park, Black Redstart, which he came across by chance whilst hill-walking.