End of year favourites - Otters

What a year it has been.  The best yet in seven years of following my local otters with trail cameras.  Selecting my favourite videos of the year has been very difficult.

2025 started with the mother otter and her two male cubs, then about six months old.  They grew rapidly and were soon bigger than she was.  These are my two favourite memories.

The cubs were with their mother on 2nd May and by the 4th they were gone and she was courting.  The courtship went on for weeks, much longer than I have read about in the books but seems to have gone to plan.  The three new cubs were born in July and first appeared on camera in November, at about four months of age.

They will be with their mother until late spring and at the moment they are appearing on camera several times a week.  Here are three recent favourites.

The otters have been dominating the blog recently so expect more videos in the coming weeks. Happy New Year.

End of year favourites - Birds on trail camera

Birds show up every day on my trail cameras.  I don't usually keep the videos of moorhens, ducks, geese, robins, pigeons, etc that I see every day but some of the recordings offer us a privileged view of behaviour that we wouldn't otherwise see.  Here are a few favourites from this year.

I am used to seeing sparrowhawks at home but this one appeared on my otter camera.  It's a first year bird, probably a female from its size, and whatever it was chasing it missed on this occasion.  I thought at the time that the call in the background was a buzzard but now I think it might be another sparrowhawk.

Water rails are much more often heard than seen.  They have a strange un-bird-like call, as this one is showing in front of the camera.

Water rails mostly eat invertebrates but will take larger prey, here a fish and a newt.

Carrion crows are pretty clever but this one was outsmarted by a mouse.  The story is a bit long to repeat in this post but you can find it here.

I posted a video of a heron eating water shrews a couple of days ago.  Another one (or perhaps the same one) tried to eat a frog, but lost it, and caught a toad but soon let it go.

Cetti's warblers were first recorded breeding in the UK only 50 years ago and they are now resident and breeding birds up here.  Like water rails they are mainly heard rather than seen but this one did turn up on the camera.  Unfortunately it wasn't singing.

Cetti's warblers sing all day and all night in the summer.  One was singing while a common snipe was exploring the bridge.  There is a little grebe and a bumblebee in the background at one point as well.

Finally a video I haven't posted before but something that turned up on PolecatCam in Allendale. A tawny owl catching a black spider in complete darkness.  Amazing.

There are birds every day on the cameras that don't make it to the blog.  I hope this has given a taste of what goes on while no-one is looking.

End of year favourites - Ladybirds

2025 was my third year of looking for ladybirds and I continued to find new species.  The highlight was finding the Scarce 7-spot Ladybird in Northamptonshire in September.  It was the third time I had been to look for it, and very satisfying.  It is shown above with the very common 7-spot Ladybird which had a good year and was seen in great numbers all over the country, even interrupting a test match.  Here's another view of the Scarce 7-spot.

I posted it on this blog, finishing off by saying that my next target was the Hieroglyphic Ladybird, one I had been to look for in various places several times.  And the very next day I found two, only a couple of miles from here while I wasn't even looking for them.  Previously very rare in the North East (and everywhere else), there were several reports up here this summer so this is another species that had a good year.

The Hieroglyphic Ladybird also has a melanic form and I found one of those a few days later.

Another new species came from my mother's garden.  This one is tiny, the appropriately named Dot Ladybird, one of a group known as inconspicuous ladybirds or microladybirds, which are small, usually hairy, and mainly lack spots.

Here is another one, not quite as small but also black, Scymnus nigrinus, also known as the Black Ladybird.

And another, this time with spots, Nephus quadrimaculatus, also known as Ivy Ladybird.  This one is about 2mm.

And Rhyzobius chrysomeloides, both these last two from Mum's garden as well.  This one is 3mm.

Another species that thrived in 2025 was Adonis' Ladybird.  I had only seen two before but there were lots to find this year.

Finally a few favourites from the many dozens of other photos I could have included.  A Striped Ladybird,

a 2-spot Ladybird, f sexpustulata,

an 18-spot Ladybird,

and a 10-spot Ladybird, f decempustulata.  I'll be on the lookout for more new species next year.

End of year favourites - Shrews

My trail cameras have captured all four species of British mainland shrews this year.  And my shrew of the year is the Greater White-toothed Shrew.

Until very recently we had only three species, Common Shrew, Pygmy Shrew and Water Shrew. Then four years ago the Greater White-toothed Shrew was found not far from here in County Durham.  It was previously known in mainland Europe and some of the Channel Islands but how it arrived here is a mystery.  I set up a camera in Elemore Park and soon had footage of this rare colonist.  You can read the full story here.

The largest of our native shrews is the Water Shrew.  As its name suggests, it is mostly found near water and there is a healthy population in Gosforth Nature Reserve, only a mile from here. There needs to be too as the local herons have taken a liking to them.  One of my cameras recorded a heron (or herons) catching and eating nine shrews in six days in one camera position.

All three native species are found in my garden and turn up in my weasel camera box.  Common Shrews and Pygmy Shrews are both regulars and the Water Shrew which was so active here last autumn made a guest appearance at the beginning of this year, with all three shrew species turning up on the same night.

One camera has been back in County Durham since the beginning of this month so I hope to have more shrew videos soon.

End of year favourites - Dragonflies

I don't take as many dragonfly and damselfly photos as I used to, mainly taking record shots for recording, but I am always on the lookout for something attractive or unusual.  The weather in 2025 was really good for dragonflies and locally and nationally it was a bumper year.

My first dragonfly of the year, and the first record in Gosforth Nature Reserve, was an immature male Broad-bodied Chaser.

Then my new meadow pond produced three Broad-bodied Chasers.  I watched them emerge and fly away but didn't see them again.  The pond has produced damselflies in the past couple of years but these were the first dragonflies.

Another early season species, and a first for me, was a male Hairy Dragonfly at RSPB Old Moor in Yorkshire.

A couple of species had a notably good year in my local Gosforth Nature Reserve.  Brown Hawker has only been recorded once before (in 2021), as far as I am aware, but this year we saw patrolling males and ovipositing females over several weeks so there is a good chance it will become established.

Black-tailed Skimmer also had only occasional previous records in the reserve but this summer there were many basking males and an ovipositing female (which I didn't see).  Again there are high hopes this may become a regular resident species.

I have the privilege of counting dragonflies on the Hepple Estate in Northumberland.  It is a reliable place to see Golden-ringed Dragonflies, males easier to photograph than females.

I also see male Emperor Dragonflies there but this was the first time I have managed a decent photo.

Finally back to Gosforth Nature Reserve where I saw my first Willow Emerald Damselfly in September.  It is the most northerly site for this species which first arrived in East Anglia less than 20 years ago.

Dragonflies and damselflies are responding rapidly to climate change so we are likely to see more species arriving and becoming established in the North East in coming years.

End of year favourites - Stoats and weasels

2025 has been the best year yet for my trail cameras.  The number of cameras has increased and I am learning how and where to set them up.  The "weasel box" in the garden is a permanent fixture and is the best way of monitoring who's around.

After all the weasel excitement here in 2024 this year has been a bit quieter.  The highlight was seeing a mother carrying her kits past the gate, moving from one nest to another.  I have sneaking suspicion she might have been in my weasel wall and was unsettled by a stoat that was hanging around.

I remodelled the interior of the box just over a year ago with some old terracotta land drains to make it more interesting (for us and the weasels).  This male was new to the box and having a good look round.

I tried baiting the pipes with a dead mouse in the hope of seeing the weasels regularly but it hasn't been a great success.  The first time I put the mouse in the top pipe and the weasel could smell it but couldn't find it.

Next time I put a mouse in a bottom pipe and a male did find it but it didn't return for another one so for the time being I have given up.

Stoats haven't been as regular visitors to the garden as weasels over the years but I saw a lot of one female in late summer and autumn.  The first sighting was near the gate.

Soon after this one visited the weasel box, something stoats are generally reluctant to do.  (This also gave me the opportunity of making the composite photo at the top of this post to compare the sizes of female stoat and female weasel.)

Then in October I was lucky enough to see a female stoat (perhaps the same one) watching me from the base of a dead tree not far from my front door.

That was the cue to set up a camera and the stoat stayed around for a few weeks.

In the last month or two it has all gone quiet, with only an occasional sighting of a weasel in the box but I hope for more activity next year.

Merry Christmas

An update from OtterCam

I am determined to make the most of the opportunity presented by the otter cubs so I am experimenting with the trail cameras.  One new camera is a Woopeak TC22 which has a number of limitations but one or two good features.  One that I like is its wide-angle view.  I set it up with one of my Brownings so that they had the same viewpoint and made this video to compare the two.  The Woopeak produces a duller, less vibrant, less contrasty picture so I have tried to match that to the Browning in editing.  The video is from last month so the cubs were a bit smaller and for most of the time only two were in shot.

One big drawback of the Woopeak is its poor night-time performance and it is overexposed when multiple cameras are shining their infrared light.  The Brownings cope especially well.  In the first part of the next video two cameras are lighting the scene and when the otters reach the water several more join in giving a brightly lit view.

I have failed over several years to get good videos of otters underwater, especially in daylight. The wide angle has some promise and might have been even better on a sunny day.  Here is the mother, each time with only one of the cubs.

I have never seen an otter in a tree before but the dog otter turned up and climbed into the base of a tree to leave a scent mark.  The camera was set to watch the bank, not the tree, and all the action was in the top left corner.  It was early morning in poor light and the image is cropped so it is rather grainy but we can just see what he was up to.  I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he had appeared with some wounds or injuries.  He doesn't seen troubled by them but the marks over his ribs are much more obvious here.  It is difficult to work out what might have caused them.  To me this looks here much less like wounds from a fight.

Finally another view of the family from a couple of nights ago.  This time all from one camera but taking advantage of the light from the others.  All the cubs were sticking close to mum this time.

Vandalism on OtterCam

The current group of cubs are the most boisterous I have seen, possibly because there are three of them.  They are full of curiosity, especially when it comes to trail cameras.  Here's what I am up against.

When I set up a camera the last thing I do is clean the lens.  Here's the first thing that happens next.

The trail cameras give us a remarkable insight into the otters' lives, something we could never see otherwise.  Here is the mother bringing in another fish.  The delay between disappearing from view and reappearing with a fish was 18 seconds.  She doesn't seem impressed with the cub's manners.

You'd think an otter would be pretty fearless as an apex predator, but not always.

The cubs are already spending less time close to their mother so it is harder to record them all in the frame at the same time, even though they are only about five months old.  I'll report back on what they get up to next. 

Fighting and grooming on OtterCam

Growing up as an otter cub looks to be such fun.  Two nights ago was by far the best fight (play fight) I have yet seen.  It went on for about 12 minutes and yielded over 100 videos on the several cameras.  Each camera will record for only 20 seconds at night and takes up to a second to restart so the frantic action is rather disjointed.  Add to that the otters constantly disappearing out of the frame and it is rather difficult to put it all together.  I spent all yesterday evening sorting through the videos.  This is not constant action but a few edited highlights from four cameras so you'll get the idea.  It started rather suddenly with two cubs fighting but the third cub and then mother joined in and the action was crazy.

Two nights before that they were all much more relaxed.  I have seen mutual grooming before but never like this.   Otters spend a lot of time out of the water looking after their fur but they also seem to get a lot of pleasure from grooming each other.  

Here is a short version of the video. 

If you have time this is most of the whole episode (over three minutes).  It is quite relaxing to watch as well.  The mother seemed to be very thirsty and several times took a drink.

The otters are producing so much video at present that I can barely keep up.  I already have more and will post it soon.

The dog otter

The dog otter doesn't get much of a look in on the blog now that the triplets are here but he is still around.  He takes no part in bringing up the cubs but he must be aware of them, by sound and scent at least.  To bring you up to date here are a few of his recent videos.  Before the rain in the past couple of weeks he was resting when he was disturbed by a moorhen.

And we had one brief snowfall when he put in an appearance.

One reason he stays around is that the living is easy.

A couple of nights ago he had two fresh wounds on his left flank.  I haven't edited this one seamlessly but I have doubled up the views from the first two cameras.   It looks quite superficial and he doesn't seem limited but I expect he was in a fight - perhaps to defend his territory although I haven't seen a strange otter around on the cameras.  I'll look out for him in the coming days.

The mother and cubs are producing more videos almost every day so there will be more from them soon.

Mrs Otter goes fishing

The mother otter is busy fishing for four but seems to have no difficulty finding enough for them all to eat.  The first video starts with mother on the bank with a fish and the cubs all raced to get it.  After a tussle one succeeded and the other two followed mother back into the water.  When she returned with a second fish only one cub was around to take it.  That left one hungry cub waiting by the water's edge.  It was probably worth the wait because the third fish was the biggest.  All this action took only three minutes.

When the mother brings a fish (still alive) she doesn't give it to a cub but usually holds it on the ground until one of them takes it.  Although there may be a fight for possession of the fish, once one cub has it the others seem to accept it and wait for another, presumably confident that their turn will come.  If no cub arrives to take the fish she will eat it herself.  She also eats all the tails etc that they leave.

As the light improved the camera changed to colour video and the fish kept coming.  Mother brought in a roach and one cub claimed it.  Another discovered a left-over tail and decided to eat that.

Eventually the cubs were full and they used the fish to practice catching them.  This cub repeatedly took its fish back into the water to "catch" it over a period of eight minutes before taking it out of view.  I presume it was eventually eaten.  This is very interesting behaviour in cubs only about 18 weeks old and seems to be spontaneous.

Another fish was a perch, also used for catching practice.

Eventually the family moved on after 80 minutes in front of the cameras and in that time the mother caught at least 13 fish.  

On another morning the otter went fishing on her own, presumably having left the cubs in a safe place.  She went past this camera four times, each time returning with a good-sized roach between 30 seconds and five minutes later.

I expect the mother will have to work even harder for the next several weeks until the cubs start catching fish for real.