Otter (wild)

Not the greatest photo of an otter ever taken, but I am quite pleased with it: the pose is characteristic. From Lower Hide, Leighton Moss RSPB reserve, 1st May 2015. Incidentally, just out of shot was a pied-billed grebe, which was attracting a lot of attention.

What time of day?

Pertinax said:

What time of day?

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About 11.45 am BST (the time shown in the EXIF data above is GMT and about 5 minutes fast).
The otters are usually seen here on the largest body of open water on the reserve, which is about 700 metres long and surrounded by reed beds and can only be observed from 2 hides. So they are very rarely disturbed and often observed in daylight. I spent most of the morning in these hides and saw an otter on several occasions. This one was the closest and the otter spent at least 10 minutes fishing in one area, catching and eating one fairly small eel and possibly smaller prey too (it's harder to see through a camera than through binoculars).

Alan

Thanks for sharing the fun otter photo. From your description and the photo it looks like you had a really nice sighting.

We have North American river otters here in California, but they are not often seen.

gentle lemur said:

So they are very rarely disturbed and often observed in daylight. I spent most of the morning in these hides and saw an otter on several occasions.

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I watched one fishing a sealoch in Scotland for an hour or so in the middle period of the day once and have seen them in daylight up there occassionally at other times.

Someone photo'd one running along the clifftop path near the Lizard in Cornwall recently- he wasn't expecting that!

Have Bitterns come back there?

IanRRobinson said:

Have Bitterns come back there?

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I'm not sure whether any have been sighted recently. They have done some dredging and reduced the water levels in the lower part of the reserve to encourage reed growth and improve the habitat for bitterns.

Alan