These beautiful creatures have a short thick beak (as their name suggests!) and a curved mouth, giving the appearance that they are always smiling. They are usually grey in colour, and measure around two to four metres in length.

They are social creatures, bottlenose dolphins travel in groups, called pods of around 10-15. In these groups they play and hunt together, as well as cooperate to raise young dolphin calves and help each other. Dolphin labour varies between 20 minutes and two hours, the young are born tail first so they don’t drown.

Bottlenose dolphins are super swimmers, gliding through the water using their curved dorsal fin on their back, a powerful tail and pointed flippers. They can reach speeds over 25 miles per hour and dive as deep as 800 feet below the surface!

Dolphins are awesome acrobats, too, and can be seen breaching out of the water. In fact, they can launch themselves up to five meters out of the water. There are different theories as to why they do this – it could be to get a better view of things in the distance, clean parasites off their bodies, communicate with other pods or just for good fun!

Although they live underwater, the bottlenose dolphin must come up to the surface to breath air. It breathes through what’s called a blowhole a hole at the top of its head. They can open this hole when inhaling and exhaling out of the water, and close it when below the ocean surface. They can hold their breath underwater for around seven minutes.

Dolphins sleep with one eye open and half their brain working.  Unlike humans, bottlenose dolphins need to be awake to breathe. They also have an internal temperature of 98.6 Fahrenheit, the same as humans.

Bottlenose dolphins produce high-pitched clicks to help them navigate and find food – a process called echolocation. When the clicking sounds hit an object in the water – such as a rock or fish – they bounce back to the dolphin as echoes. From this, they can work out the location, size and shape of the object. Dolphins are not able to smell prey but they have an acute sense of taste, being able to distinguish between, sweet, sour, bitter and salty.  They also have very good eyesight both in and out of the water.

Dolphins eat mostly fish, up to 15 -30 pounds per day, they will also eat crustaceans such as shrimp and squid. They don’t chew and eat fish and squid, whole. They always eat their prey head first to avoid going against the grain with the scales.  When hunting they will often smack their prey with their tail to stun them.

There are three dolphin species in the Moray Firth, the bottlenose dolphins. Risso's dolphins and (the not so common) common dolphins.  You are most likely to spot dolphins between an hour to two hours after the tide has turned and is rising.  Good places are Chanonry Point on the Black Isle and from Fort George.

For centuries, sailors and fisherman have considered seeing dolphins at sea as a sign of good luck.