Drone sighting of escaped monkey in Highlands raises hopes he is homeward bound

A monkey who escaped from a wildlife park in the Scottish Highlands has been spotted about 300 metres from the park’s entrance, raising hopes he will return to his enclosure of his own volition after a third night of freedom.

The drone footage was taken just as the light was fading on Tuesday evening by a conservation consultant, Ben Harrower, who is assisting a search team from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, which runs the park. It shows the Japanese macaque moving on the ground under dense tree cover.

A headcount of the macaque enclosure at the Highland Wildlife Park in the Cairngorms on Wednesday morning confirmed that one was still missing, but animal keepers were hopeful the escapee may return at some point on Wednesday.

The alarm was first raised on Sunday when residents of the nearby village of Kincraig in the Cairngorms noticed an unusual visitor in their gardens. Though the missing macaque is not thought to pose a threat to humans or pets, locals have been advised not to approach him but to report sightings to a dedicated monkey hotline – and are being encouraged to remove potential food sources such as bins and garden bird nuts.

Also known as snow monkeys, macaques are familiar with cold mountain habitats, but increasingly windy weather on Wednesday morning meant that efforts by the Cairngorm mountain rescue team to trace him using thermal imaging had to be stood down.

Searchers on foot were also conscious that the use of anaesthetic darts would be made much more difficult by the blustery weather.

Instead, animal keepers are relying on a more basic lure: food. Typically at feeding time in the macaque enclosure, a referee’s whistle is blown to alert the troop. Now it is being blown more frequently in the hope of attracting the missing member back to base.

The macaque enclosure is on the near side of the park, past camels and bison, but the missing monkey was expected to approach from the shelter of the disused farmland that surrounds the park – rather than walking up the driveway as a tourist would.

One theory is that he jumped the fence seeking respite from the tensions of breeding season – there are two dominant males in the park’s macaque group and their absent counterpart is younger and less confident.

Given that the farthest sighting of the macaque has been 4km away, park officials were hopeful their missing resident would make the extra few hundred metres back to his enclosure later on Wednesday.