Washington Waterfowl Park

It’s been a few years since I’d been to the Washington Waterfowl Park, part of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, but I’ve been meaning to go for a while  and with the weather predicting to be a rare, sunny day and without the cold strong winds of late, I decided to go.  Although they have a wide range of mostly birds on view, it was the Asian Short Clawed Otters that I really wanted to see.  I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Otters – there’s something very mischievous and endearing about them and they have two of them as part of a breeding program being now endangered in the wild. When I arrived it was just before feeding time for them – and they new it – both were getting very excited, making various high pitched chirping and crying sounds. I don’t normally complain about having good weather, but the bright sunshine actually made the photography difficult with the strong, high light creating strong highlights and shadows and despite the bright light I was barely getting away with an ISO of 400 and should have really put it up to 800 to prevent blurring through movement.  Anyway, here’s a sequence of some of the Otter ones, from waiting in anticipation for the fish meal, to devouring it in about a minute!

Oh, and there was a few birds at the centre to photograph.