After Tuesday’s Otter Safari, Wednesday brought another one, this time a Prestige Tour.

Now, I know that you can never guarantee the wildlife that you’ll see on any day (not entirely true, I know…) but the sentence “what we really want is to photograph an Otter” adds a certain pressure to the proceedings 🙂

I collected Pete and Christine and we began our otter search of Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland.  After a near miss (wildfowl scattering in a pattern that we’ve come to recognise as strongly indicative of the presence of otters), we settled by a mirror calm pool and waited.  As we marvelled at the remarkable weather condition of bright sunshine and heavy rain, a heightened sense of alertness amongst the ducks increased my confidence that ‘mission accomplished’ would be the outcome of the trip.  That confidence wasn’t misplaced and we enjoyed 25 minutes of an Otter twisting, turning and feeding.  As a stunning sunset developed we waited to see if there would be a reappearance.  There was, and with the cover of twilight the star of the show became more enterprising in it’s hunting technique; stealthily approaching ducks and their ducklings.  After a couple of failed sorties it returned to feeding on small fish and another 30 minutes of action.