It’s one of the fundamentals of wildlife-watching that the behaviour of whatever you’re watching is a good indication of what other wildlife close by is doing.
I collected Darren and Karen from West Acre in Alnwick and we set out on a Prestige Otter Safari, covering Druridge Bay/southeast Northumberland and other stretches of the Northumberland coast.
When you see geese, ducks and swans getting away from one spot as fast as they can, then you know that in all likelihood there’s a predator around that’s serious enough to concern all of them. That usually means an Otter, but the one causing the first major panic we witnessed remained hidden. Arriving at our final site for the day the first thing that was obvious was that every duck we could see was alert. Within a few seconds I’d spotted the cause of their concern as an Otter made it’s way quickly along the edge of the pool towards a reedbed. It vanished into the reeds – just as a pair of Mute Swans were heading that way with their cygnets…
One of the swans held back slightly and the other positioned itself between the cygnets and the reedbed. The advance guard of concerned swan made it’s way right to the edge of the reeds and then stuck it’s head into the reeds, first looking towards the end where the Otter had entered, then looking straight ahead, before finally looking left and then right as it presumably lost track of it’s sinuous nemesis. Throughout this prolonged episode the ducks were alert, then calm, then alert, then calm..presumably as they caught sight of the Otter, then forgot about it as soon as it was hidden in the reeds again. Eventually, as so often happens on our Otter Safaris, the light faded towards black and we headed back to Alnwick.