Fun With Otters...

My memory card has arrived! The internal memory of my camera can store no more than five full sized photos, with my 16GB memory card I can now store 2,317!! I think that's enough...

Watching Simon King in Shetland last night inspired me to get some Otter shots, so this morning I went down to the Borrow Pit at about 9am. On my arrival I could instantly see an Otter feeding in the middle of the water so I started snapping away. It wouldn't stop moving, and only stayed up for a few seconds at a time. Meaning most photos turned out like this....

I do love their tails though!

But the odd shot did come out like this!!

And here's a very short video of this animal...

Then I noticed a second Otter, much closer to me feeding amongst some short reeds. This one just wouldn't show in the open though... not at first anyway....

Nice view of it's ear!

I think it's seen me, surely it won't come any closer now.....

.....WRONG!!!!

Then it did see me! He/she 'barked' at me three times, before disappearing under...

'woof woof'

What an experience! We are soooooo lucky to have these relatively 'easy' Otters on patch.

After this brilliant start to the day, I started birding. And first stop was Lower Bruckland Ponds where these were nice to see...

Two drake Tufted Ducks

A sweep of the estuary showed a drake Gadwall and the Spoonbill distantly north of Coronation Corner, doing what Spoonbills do best...

....sleeping! Note the size compared with those hulking Great Black-backs!

I then spent half an hour with a lone female-type Black Redstart at Seaton Hole. Yes sorry, more Black Red photos...

No sign of the male whilst I was here

And just so the Rock Pipit didn't feel left out...

snap!

And that was my few hours out this morning...