Watching an Otter

This morning's grey skies and thin drizzle were a bit of a shock after a month's dry weather but we took ourselves to Achnaha and then walked to this beach, the one the family knows as the shelly beach but, I'm told, is properly called Port Each Beag.

As we stood looking down at its grey waters we spotted....

....an otter feeding in the bay, so we sat on a rock and watched him.

He swam up and down less than a hundred metres off shore....

....diving frequently and seeming to come up every time with something to eat.

Whatever this was, it was long and thin and wriggly, perhaps an eel, and he spent some time swimming around chewing at it.

This may look as if he occasionally relaxed: he didn't. The sharp teeth clearly visible in the picture were hard at work on his latest catch, and this seemed to be a position he favoured while eating.

WE might have been watching an otter but we, too, were being watched, by an inquisitive rock pipit.