The Caithness landscape is characteristically flat, dominated by wide open skies and long views towards hills such as Morven and Scaraben to the south, Ben Dorrery and Ben Freiceadain to the west and Hoy, on Orkney to the north.

Together with Sutherland, Caithness is internationally renowned for its vast expanses of blanket bog. The two counties hold the largest and most intact areas of this habitat in Scotland, some 4,000km^2. The bogs provide an important sink for both carbon and water.

There are also drier areas of peatland that provide heather moor, which is used primarily for sporting, including deer stalking and, to a lesser extent, grouse shooting. Fishing for salmon or trout takes place in scattered rivers and lochs. Sheep are grazed and peats cut on the edges of the moors.

Caithness' blanket bogs have developed in an undisturbed way for 4,000 years. Although the annual rainfall is not particularly high (around 1,000 mm per year) the ground can become waterlogged due to its flatness and the low evaporation rate in the cloudy, cool summers. This makes Caithness ideal for the growth of new peat, formed by the death of mosses and sedges and their preservation as they sink into the airless brown water. The peat has accumulated into thick spongy blankets that retain the water and perpetuate the conditions for further peat development.

The plants that live on the permanently wet peat are special to this habitat, and the dominant plants include the sphagnum mosses, the cotton grasses, cross-leaved heath and bog asphodel. A rich and varied invertebrate fauna provides a food source for some specialised bird species including common scoter, greenshank, dunlin and wood sandpiper. The birds get some protection from predators due to the softness of the ground and lack of cover and nesting sites.

The Knockfin Heights, in the south west of the county, is a notable area of very wet peat and pools or dubh lochans, at a height of 400 metres above sea level.

Scottish Natural Heritage Peatland Management Scheme (Natural Care Scheme)

Life Peatlands Project

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds management over extensive peatland

Forsinard peat bog trail (in neighbouring Sutherland)

In places where the peat has ceased to grow, through drainage or where the soils are drier (mineral rich), the vegetation becomes dominated by heather. Left alone, the heather moor would gradually transform to birch woodland, but burning and grazing prevents the trees from prospering. Large areas of Caithness consist of heather moor studded with small acid lochs and crossed with burns and rivers. The scale of this land makes it locally important.

There are scattered plants of interest, such as creeping lady's tresses, but the main natural interest is the bird and insect life. Red-throated and black-throated divers, wigeon, golden plover, short-eared owl, hen harrier, merlin and peregrine falcons inhabit this country.

For the past 120 years the heather moor has been devoted to sporting interest, mainly deer stalking with some grouse shooting and salmon and trout fishing in the lochs and rivers. Sheep have been grazed in varied numbers over the past 200 years, prior to which it was used to graze black cattle. In recent times, large areas of heather moor have been planted with conifer trees.

Peatland Management Scheme

The Caithness hills are not high (up to 706 metres or 2,300 feet above sea level) but the wind exposure and low summer temperatures make them alpine habitats in the United Kingdom context. There is also a diversity of rock types, which leads to a greater diversity of flora.

Morven is conglomerate rock with scree, and has alpine bearberry and alpine saxifrage, as well as the scarce rock whitlow-grass. Scaraben is a quartzite hill with little soil and an impoverished flora. Smean is a craggy sandstone hill with crevices of richer minerals bearing green spleenwort and Wilson's filmy fern.