Lutra lutra

Last weekend we took part in the beached bird survey. This meant walking at coastline of Oronsay searching for any seabirds that had washed ashore. The survey is coordinated across the UK on the same dates to help build up a picture of seabird casualties and any underlying causes such as oil spills etc.

Our search of Oronsay turned up no beached seabirds, which is fantastic and a wonderful contrast to last year when we found several birds ashore.

While surveying the East coast of Oronsay I was fortunate enough to have a female otter and her young cub emerge from the sand dunes not 10 meters away from me.

 

The mother went into the shallows and called the pup out. After it went into the water they then foraged around the rocks for 20 minutes or so. I watched from the dunes before leaving them to it.

Really quite the privilege. I spent a lot of time last winter on Oronsay trying to get good views of otters. I've been having better success this year, sheer determination and spending more time out and about is the key. And with sights like this, absolutely worth it.