WILDLIFE WEIR

Walking through Wharfemeadows Park, the best time to appreciate the wildlife around Otley weir is early in the morning, before there has been too much disturbance. The bottom of the weir often holds a heron, statuesque and stationary, waiting with beak poised for small fish to shoot over.
Occasionally, especially during the summer, kingfishers can be seen on the trees at the water's edge or on the islands just below the weir. Once disturbed they are away and later in the day are much easier to find further downstream by Gallows Hill or Knotford Nook.
Dippers, round dumpy birds with bright white fronts, can regularly be found bobbing up and down on rocks in the shallows. They walk into the water and then swim below the surface using their wings like miniature penguins as they search the riverbed for the larvae of aquatic insects.
At the margins run grey wagtails with vivid yellow underparts and constantly flicking tails. A few eke out a living throughout the winter but more fly north for the summer when riverside insects provide an abundant food source. Above the weir the crowds of resident mallards are sometimes joined by goosanders, the males resplendent in black and white, much more showy than the brown and grey females which from a distance can be almost invisible. They swim low in the water like small sleek submarines before submerging to catch fish in their saw-toothed bills.
The gulls are mainly black-headed but a sign of the returning spring may be the appearance of a much larger lesser black-backed gull perched on the top of the weir, on the way back from a winter in Africa to nest up in the Dales.
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