Apologies for the radio silence

...but in the two months since I last posted, I've barely had time to pick up a camera unless it was to shoot pictures of beads.

I saw the otter again yesterday whilst walking the dogs - you guessed it, no camera. And, worse, the dogs chased it and caught up with it, though it swam off with no apparent injuries, a ginormous fish still firmly clamped in its mouth. Today I walked the dogs in the field and then went back down to the beach with my camera. No otter, but plenty of oystercatchers:





And it wouldn't be a beach birds set without a ringed plover in there somewhere!



I think this is a female wheatear - I'm checking with knowledgeable people:



On the way back up to the house I took the opportunity to photograph my favourite sheep. This is Polly, she belongs to my neighbours and is due to lamb any day now:



I'm beginning to love sheep portraits - should I be getting worried??

Otterly fantastic

Sorry for abandoning you through November, but it's my busiest month and I barely got time to pick up my camera other than to photograph beads.

No pictures in this post either, but I wanted to report some progress in my quest to photograph otters. I have a veg patch with a view - it's in our bottom field, so it looks out over the bay. On Sunday morning I was happily getting on with digging it over (my neighbour kindly drove two tons of well-rotted manure down there for me over the summer and it needs to go on) when something caught my eye in the water. It was a flat calm day and the tide was high and there were two otters fishing in the shallows. I watched them for about half an hour.

After lunch today the sky was blue and all the work that really, really HAD to be done was done, so I went back to my manure-spreading. The veg patch is in the bottom corner of the field, next to our fence. There's a steep bank and our neighbour on the other side has fenced about 20 feet of flat ground off for vegetables before there's another, flatter, bank. In this flatter bank is a large rabbit hole, which the dogs always go and investigate when we're down there. Today I saw what I thought was a cat sitting in the grass beside it. My brain was telling me there was something odd about the shape of its head, so I looked again - and saw the second otter emerging from the hole! The first otter bounced off past the neighbour's gate and down to the beach and the second one disappeared back down the hole - so I think we may be on for cubs next year!

It's all about luck

Because I'd done the last three dog walks by myself, I was all prepared to let Mick take Smokey out on his own this evening, especially since he was going back up on the hill. But then he stuck his head back through the kitchen door and said because the tide was out he was going to go down to the beach instead and I changed my mind and went with him.

We walked along at the water's edge and saw the sand appear to bubble as the waves washed over it. Lugworm holes, lots and lots of them. And that was when Mick saw the otter.

It took me a good five minutes to see it, I was looking too far out, but it stayed in view for easily half an hour, swimming between waves, diving through them with a flick of its tail.

Did I have my camera with me? Of course not :o) But I shall go down tomorrow at the same time and look again. Maybe I'll be lucky...

Note to self: seen approx 5.30pm, low tide approx 2.45pm.

$£(%&(%*$%&*(!!!!!!!!

Please insert your own swear word into the title.

I saw an otter yesterday.

Did I have my camera with me? Guess!

To be fair, the Somerfield car park in Wick is not the place one would expect to see an otter, but as we got out of the car we saw something swimming very fast against the current in the adjacent river that definitely wasn't a duck. We followed it upstream for a few minutes, got close enough to ascertain that it was an otter, not a rat or a water vole, and then it dived and was gone.

Back on the beach

The first thing I had to do today was get past the gate guardians, AKA next door's pigs, who'd decided to have a nap at the top of the shared drive:



Over the other side of the road, there was a buzzard hunting on the hill:



One day I'll walk up there and sit and watch for it - maybe I can get a bit closer! On the path down to the beach I was thrilled to see that the bank, which had been washed smooth in the rain, had fresh otter prints on it:



Today I crossed over the Armadale Burn and went to the far end of the beach. There are pied wagtails down there:



But what I wasn't expecting to see was a ringed plover chick shoot out from nearly under my feet and start legging it towards the dunes. I followed it with my longest lens and when it darted behind a hillock and didn't come out, crept up on it:

It's there, I know it's there...

Firstly, I'm proud to reveal the owner of those eggs:



- a ringed plover. It's a pretty rotten shot, but they're not very big and they can run like the clappers!

This is where I think the otter lives:



If you look at the bank, you can make out paw prints. I've spoken to some more of our neighbours now and they say they think there is one there, but there's certainly one at the other beach at the end of the road. I haven't been down there yet, so that's next on the list of places to explore. The downside is that for the best chance of seeing one, you need to go down there around 5am or earlier, and I'm not the best mornings person in the world...

I was looking at natural patterns last night. It was about half past nine when I got to the beach and the sun had lowered over the headland. So we got stripes:



and we got waves in the sand:

Missed opportunity

Another note to self: when going to the beach, even if it's only to stretch your legs and the light is no good for landscape, take the blooming camera!! I didn't today and wouldn't you know it, spotted two porpoises in the waves at the far end of the beach.

OK, so I didn't know whether they were dolphins or porpoises at first, but found this handy link, which explains the differences quite nicely.

Also seen on the beach today: the skeleton of something that might have been Daffy Duck (duck's bill, lots of black feathers still on the skull and collarbone), a couple of dark blue crab shells, part of an oyster shell, lots of gulls and whatever it is that's sitting on those eggs I took a photo of - it's NOT an oyster catcher. I still don't know what it is, but I'm trying to find out.

I'm now 95% certain that we have an otter in the burn. There's a stretch of bank with paw marks on it right next to a dug-out hole under some overhanging bushes. I'll have to get up really, really early one morning and check it out.