An encounter today that simply could not have been better! Spent a couple of hours with a mother and three cubs at a site I have not visited for over three months, wonderful to see them doing so well!
The wind was quite strong and on-shore which was ideal- scent blown well away from the direction of the Otters and also the noise of the wild sea on the rocks easily drowning out any noise from the shutter.
I moved into a position whilst they foraged off-shore, well back from where I expected them to land. later during the encounter they worked closer each time they came to shore until at one point two cubs were on one side and the third at my other whilst it devoured an Octopus, a marvelous sight! On more than one occasion they were practically 'nose to lens', too close to focus with my 200 2.8 that I was using!!
Astonishingly one of the cubs actually walked across the backs of my outstretched legs as I lay flat out on my front on the bladder wrack seaweed between boulders, hood up, gloves on, all but invisible to a very poorly sited Otter at any distance.
The Octopus consumption was indeed rather amusing, the cub was not at all impressed with the writhing sucker stretching extremities but once it got the right approach made light work of it. Its amazing just how many species they learn to cope with both on-shore and indeed in the water.
