If you listen carefully to this first video, after the mother whistles she makes a low-pitched cat-like mewing sound that I haven't heard before. It must be to encourage the cub to come and take the fish. Two minutes later the cub appeared on an adjacent camera with the (now dead) fish and played with it in the water for a few moments before bringing it out to eat.
The next otter didn't lack ambition but its stalking skills weren't what they might be. The white blob on the second camera is a water drop on the rain hood.
The little old bridge is a very popular spot with the otters. They enjoy rolling on it and may visit several times in 24 hours. Even though I have five cameras in position the otters are quite close and rarely sit in the right place so piecing together the video clips into something coherent is a challenge. Here is my attempt with a sequence of the cubs fighting and the mother trying not to get involved.
The cubs are now as big as their mother and I suspect that both might be male. It is about time they started catching their own dinner.
It looks as though the otters have completely taken over the blog, for now at least. I am still refining the camera positions each time to try to cover as much of the action as possible. I have four cameras on the old boardwalk bridge and the otters are triggering about 150 videos a week, mostly in daylight. That's over two hours of videos clips to sort through - after sifting out all the moorhen, water rail, heron and wood mouse pictures. Most recordings don't get edited into a brief story but the best do. Here is the family, close together for once.
At other times the cubs lag behind and mother has to wait for them. I expect the second one is the cub that got lost a few weeks ago. I can't tell if it always the same one dawdling.
The cubs are now over seven months old and fairly well grown but they spend a lot of their time playing and still seem to expect their food to be caught for them. Here is a taste of what they get up to when the cameras are watching.
The dog otter hasn't been around for the past week or so - I expect he's on patrol somewhere else in his territory. More otter news soon.
I can barely keep up. I am intending to post something other than otters on the blog but the cameras are seeing so much at the moment that it would be a pity not to share it. Just so it's not all otters I'll start with moorhens.
The next video is a bit sad to watch. The mother otter caught a fish and gave it to one of the cubs but unfortunately the cub lost the fish down a gap between the boards. It went in a frantic pursuit and amazingly managed to squeeze through a gap which is only two or three inches wide. I think the fish must have got away, despite being bitten in the head by the mother otter, because seconds later the cub was back for another look on top. Eventually it had to give up, lesson learned but still hungry.
It is astonishing that the cub could fit through the gap, and that it knew it would. Here is another edit with a slow-motion replay.
At about 7 months of age the cubs may be starting to catch their own fish but I have yet to see that on camera. Most of the time they just want to play.
It didn't take long. The otters very quickly became used to seeing my cameras in the new position in daylight and now regard them as playthings to be sniffed or wrestled to the ground, which doesn't do much for picture quality.
The gap in the bridge which the otters use to go in and out of the water is less than six inches wide but they all easily fit through it. The bridge is covered with moss and seems to be a favoured spot for rolling and grooming, as well as play-fighting. The cubs are probably about seven months old now and are nearly as big as their mother so it is getting more difficult to tell them all apart. I think the "fight" here is between mother and a cub.
The dog otter is still around as well. I was excited when I saw him bringing a large fish out of the water but disappointed when he went straight back in before eating it. This is the same brief sequence on two cameras.
I am still experimenting with camera positions and angles in the new spot, trying to keep the cameras low and fairly close in to get good pictures. Here is one of the hazards!
For the past week I have been experimenting with a new camera position and it has already turned out to be very exciting. On the first, rather misty night there was one camera in position and the otters obviously found it quite intriguing. Fortunately no damage was done although it was knocked slightly out of position.
The next night the camera was still pointing down but one of the cubs came and rolled around right next to it.
After this I put in a second camera and the first cub came to have look at both, again on a wet misty night. It was having a drink of water through a hole in the bridge when mum turned up.
On the next night the dog otter came to have a look. At first he didn't like it at all and went straight back into the water but seconds later he was feeling a bit braver and came back for a second and closer look.
The last video is the only daytime recording so far. The cameras must look a lot more scary in daylight as neither of the cubs nor their mother wanted to get close this time.
The otters' reaction to the cameras is interesting to compare with foxes (which turn away as soon as they see one) and badgers (which don't notice the light but usually don't like my scent). It is also interesting to see how the otters are curious at night, when they can only see the red light but very wary in the day when they can see the cameras. I hope they will just get used to the cameras being here and I hope to have more videos from this new position soon.
The end of 2024 saw the completion of 30 years of data collection and analysis by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) Garden BirdWatch (GBW). It has up to 13,000 people submitting up to half million records each year and once a data set gets that big it starts to produce really interesting and valuable results. I have been fortunate to be a member and to have been submitting data from my garden from the start in January 1995. On the GBW website I can look back at my own data but perhaps it is more interesting to examine long-term trends in the North East or the whole country. Two examples, chosen because of observations in my garden, are Rook and Ring-necked Parakeet which show contrasting fortunes. When I moved here in 1989 there was a rookery in the small copse in my garden. The rooks were great fun to have as neighbours but their numbers gradually dwindled from a peak of 44 nests to six nests in 2010. A few birds turned up for a look round but didn't nest in 2011 and there have been none since. The GBW data for gardens in the North East show a steady decline but some people are still fortunate to see them.
I can see from my GBW data that the first time I saw a ring-necked parakeet here was in week 12 (March) 2022. I saw one or two birds until week 17 and then they disappeared. The next record was in week 46 (November) 2022 and they have been here in numbers ever since, up to 15 at a time. Here is the graph for gardens in the North East so this is a bird that is obviously here to stay.
Here they are seen through the kitchen window with the iPhone. Note the three non-native mammals as well. They are even more regular visitors than the parakeets.
Two finches, both very common here, also show contrasting fortunes. Greenfinches have long been in decline nationally, probably mainly because of infection with trichomonosis. In recent weeks here I have been seeing up to nine at a time but this is the national picture, first for presence, then abundance.
.
In contrast, goldfinches, which commonly feed alongside greenfinches, are doing well. They seem not to be affected by trichomonosis.
The BTO GBW data shows lots of other winners and losers over the past 30 years. Birds in decline include spotted flycatchers, starlings and collared doves. Those increasing in numbers include wood pigeons, great spotted woodpeckers and magpies. One final comparison I have chosen is between our two sparrows. First house sparrow (a very rare bird in my garden, only two sightings in 30 years),
and tree sparrow (a new arrival here about 13 years ago but scarce for the last two years).
The BTO Garden BirdWatch is one of the largest and most valuable citizen science projects in this country, providing important and fascinating insight into changes and trends in the fortunes of our garden birds. As someone too lazy to keep lists I find it a great way to check on what has been happening in my own garden as well.
I expect most of you will have had better things to do but a few may have seen Winterwatch on BBC2 last night. This was quite a surreal experience for me and, as you might imagine, I was way out of my comfort zone. The only benefit was that rather than one or two hundred people seeing my otter videos, two million might enjoy them. It wasn't easy for me watching that shrivelled old man in the silly hat but, hey ho, you only live once.
The initial approach came from Andy Strong, a BBC researcher on "The Watches", via an introduction from Vivien Kent, our local otter expert. It was closely followed by a Zoom call with Andy and Amy Young, my producer. They had seen the otter videos on my blog and set up a filming day at Gosforth Nature Reserve in mid December. We met before dawn at the reserve and were busy all day with no breaks. Amy and Andy were there along with Simon Glass the camera man and Graham Smith doing sound recording.
I spent most of the morning walking up and down, being filmed from different directions with different lenses, outside the reserve, at the entrance, in the woods and on the boardwalk. Simon then flew the drone while I was walking up and down the boardwalk and we eventually got in to where the trail cameras are. More filming with me explaining where the cameras were, how they were set up and where the otters would be. Then an interview, which I don't think I did very well. I guess part of the reason for all the other filming is to be able to cut away from me rabbiting on and to be able to shorten the audio.
After another drone flight we moved on to one of the hides in the afternoon but in mid December there usually isn't much to see and to no surprise but much to Amy's disappointment no otters appeared. This is Simon flying the drone with Amy watching and Grahamspotting.
By the time we finished it was getting dark so it was a relentless long day - a one off for me but that is what the team does every day. Amy, Andy, Graham and Simon were all very supportive, very encouraging and seemed pleased with the way things went although I suspect they were just being polite. Amy and Andy came back here to look through my otter videos, concentrating on the winter recordings and taking my edited versions plus all the original clips so they could re-edit them properly.
I think I had been waffling a lot in the interview because I then met up with Graham a couple of weeks ago to re-record the audio - I suspect some of my descriptions had been much longer than the videos but a lot of the re-recorded audio sounds a bit slow and "flat" to me, not really the way I speak in real life.
Here are Amy and Andy the producers.
Simon camera.
Graham sound.
While I was explaining about the trail cameras they were still recording so here is a brief camera's eye view of the process.
Having watched the final result last night I am amazed how good a job Amy and her team did pulling it together and the response from friends and family has been very encouraging and very positive. It has caused a lot of excitement in and around the reserve so I am very pleased I got involved. Looking back I can think of lots of things I could or should have done better (two hours in makeup would have helped), not that I want to have another go. Believe me it is much more difficult than David Attenborough makes it look, but then he does have 70 odd years' experience. His job is safe for now.
I am grateful to Brian Rutter for these photos and to Clare Freeman, the NHSN director, for approval for the whole project. The recording of the programme is available on the BBC iPlayer here for over a year - my section starts at 45:00 if you don't want to watch the whole thing. It was also previewed on BBC Look North and I was interviewed on BBC Radio Newcastle so it has been quite a week! You can find out more about Gosforth Nature Reserve and the Natural History Society of Northumbria on their website here.
