September 2021 - Otters

Who doesn’t love otters! As you may recall, I very much enjoy going to the London Wetland Centre in Barnes. The parent organisation (Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust - WWT) was founded by Sir Peter Scott at Slimbridge in 1946 – and has created 9 beautiful centres where we can all see their work, marvel at the wetland around you and enjoy all the birds that they care for and conserve.  

But at the London centre, they also have a pair of otters. I haven’t seen many otters in my life (deprived, I know!) and these two are often doing their best to scamper around and out of sight of the visitors. Indeed, of all the times that I have been there, this is the only one when they were happily in public view and relatively stationary. It was great to see them jumping in and out of the water and then drying off in the September sun near these logs.

The biggest problem for me was the glass wall between us and them. I am not particularly tall – and this barrier is bigger than me. Photographing through the glass would have given me some pictures of the otters but shooting through glass means that you get all the dirt spots on the glass in the photo, or even find that the focus has shifted to the glass itself rather than the objects behind it. So, I am left to balancing the camera on the top of the glass and seeing the image through the display on its back. Fortunately, that tilts and so I can look up at it and still see what I am photographing – not a perfect solution as it is very difficult to hold the camera perfectly still in those circumstances.

But anyway, I was able to get a few shots of these delightful animals – and this one shows the two of them resting their heads on a log and, maybe, plotting where they were going to run to next.