Warwick Lister-Kaye is Nat Hab’s head Expedition Leader in Scotland. He and his wife, Becky, love welcoming Nat Hab guests into their home in the Highlands where they live and are raising their young family. Warwick’s roots in the Highlands run deep, beginning with his birth in a kennel! Specifically, the kennel block where Lord Tweedmouth first bred the golden Labrador retriever in 1868. It was later converted into a small house from which Warwick's parents ran the first wildlife tourism business in the Scottish Highlands. They went on to establish Aigas Field Center, where Warwick grew up surrounded by amazing naturalists, geomorphologists, research students and those who imagined a bright future for Scotland's wild land. He grew up roaming and learning about the rivers, lochs, glens & rugged shorelines of the Highlands.

After secondary school, Warwick attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, commissioning as an infantry officer in The Highlanders in 1996. Over the next six years he served several tours in Northern Ireland and was amongst the first troops to liberate Kosovo with NATO in 1999, where he helped negotiate sensitive disarmament agreements with the bands of guerillas in the Kosovan hills. After leaving the Army, Warwick entered the travel industry where he has held various roles, including owning a travel company that led trips to Egypt, South America and Antarctica. In 2008 he returned to his home in the Highlands and has been showing guests the wonders of the wild Scotland ever since.

Having been fortunate to watch extraordinary wildlife all over the world, Warwick now draws enormous contentment from the wild creatures that share his home. "Standing on my doorstep on a frosty winter's morning watching a skein of whooper swans flying low up the River Beauly, their calls ringing around the glen, brings me as much pleasure as anything I can remember," he says.

Warwick is a passionate paraglider and has flown with lammergeiers in the Himalaya, black vultures in Colombia and golden eagles in Scotland. He describes this indelible memory: "In April 2022, I rode a thermal with a sea eagle on the Isle of Skye. She was so close to me that I could see individual feathers fluttering on her chest and watch the subtle movements of her head as she surveyed the glens below us. It was a deeply spiritual moment for me."

Nat Hab travelers to Scotland are in for a treat when they meet Warwick, and you’ll be hard-pressed to have more fun that at a lively ceilidh to welcome you to the Highlands. Not familiar with this Gaelic term? You’ll just have to come to find out!