by Lindsey

Visitors and staff were stunned this morning when a U.S.O (Unidentified Swimming Object) was sighted out in front of the hides. The monster  appeared and reappeared slinking around in the water heading for the hides. We caught glimpses of it here and there in the reeds and under a lilypad, what was this? The Team for Extra-terrestrial Activity (T.E.A) were on standby to switch the kettle on. Everyone in the hides was transfixed, a new species? A prehistoric visitor from the North? Then photographer Phil Hannah managed to get this snap. Hmm what could it be?

 

It was, of course, our male Otter coming in for a look at the Great Crested Grebe nest, it had a good swim around but made no attempt to go on the nest. We can’t see into the Grebe nest so can’t tell if there’s any eggs at present but that fact that the Otter didn’t go for it suggests there isn’t anything there at the moment. We got some fantastic views of the Otter swimming and rolling around, hopefully we’ll have some pics to share later in the week.

In Osprey news, our chick is eight days old today and still thriving, we’ve had two fish so far today, one which was so  small we couldn’t identify it before it was eaten! Our male still comes into the nest appearing to want to incubate but when she left him with the chick while she had a poo break he appeared awkward and unsure what to do.

One of Roy Dennis’s satellite tagged Ospreys Rothiemurchus visited us yesterday, he’d was here a couple of weeks ago and has been hanging around this area since then.

The female Goosander was back again with her 13 chicks, it took us several attempts to count them all but we finally got them all. Phil also managed to get this fantastic pic of most of them all practising their swimming, thanks for the pics Phil.