Autumnwatch

I want to tell you about an amazing wildlife sighting in our garden Sunday morning.

We have a spring running through our garden, the spring is piped from our garden, under several other gardens under a road and through to a ditch about 90 metres away. We were amazed to see an otter appear from the piped area Sunday morning. We watched the otter for about an hour as it came into our garden, disappeared and re-appeared from the pipe. I managed to take some photos despite the torrential rain (unfortunately the camcorder battery was flat!).

I have never seen a wild otter in this country before - this was definitely one of those "it doesn't get much better than this" moments!

Not wanting to boast but we also had two great spotted woodpeckers in the garden at the same time. I'm ashamed to say I totally ignored them, although this doesn't happen very often,I only had eyes for the otter.

This must beat eco-birding!

WOW!! how lucky are you??

Hi,

Sorry about the user name, I only joined tonight and everything I thought of was already being used.

I live in North Wiltshire a few miles from the Thames.

I am going to attempt to put some photos on, unfortunately they are not too great as the weather was so awful and I didn't want to frighten the otter.

I still can't believe how lucky we were - I will be glued to the window all weekend!

Brilliant sighting, supersariska. I would love to see the otter photo's.
Val.

Hi,

I would be interested to know if you can identify the 'bird' in the photos! Only joking, it was a present and we've never worked out what it is supposed to be.

benms.co.uk/otter/ot...

benms.co.uk/otter/ot...

benms.co.uk/otter/ot...

Isn't this what nature is about? We've spent holidays looking for certain animals and not seen them. Can you imagine how we felt walking into our kitchen Sunday morning, looking out of the window and seeing an otter? We do not back onto fields, we have lived here 18 years, we occasionally see hedgehogs, foxes and squirrels, but never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined we would get an otter in the garden.

Don't give up looking, you never know what you might see!

How fantastic. To see an otter peering round the edge of your shed must have been so exciting and quite surreal. I have a large pond, with visits from mallard, heron and even grey wagtail, but I don't think however long I gaze out of my kitchen window, I will ever see anything as remarkable as that.

I understand those 'obvious signs' can also be misleading (if I understand the way your post is nuanced).

I'm just amazed that this has happened out of nowhere. Most often you hear of folks who are pretty sure there's an otter around, have maybe looked for years, might have caufght a glimpse of what might have been one once etc etc.

But in your case, BANG, there it is. Never even a thought that you'd ever see one.

Love it. Hope you have a terrific weekend and look forward to hearing more.

Hi,

Just thought I would post an update. As we thought last weekend, the otter was a truly amazing one-off sighting.

Have spent a lot of the weekend looking out of the window, have had a big influx of birds into the garden but no otter. To be perfectly honest I think it was on a scouting mission, as there is no food source in our garden I didn't think it would return. I'm just so thankful we were in last weekend to witness a once in a lifetime garden experience!

Great photos. How lucky were you.