Crazy Water Otter

A busy but very enjoyable Saturday. In the morning I headed to the Peterborough City Art Gallery with Ben and Sarah to see their Urban art exhibition. It was a really good mix of often thought-provoking pieces including several by well known artists including Banksy, Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin. Many of the works were for sale - one by Banksy had a price tag of £2,000,000. We generally preferred the work of some of the less well-known (at least to the general public) artists such as My Dog Sighs. We'd arrived early and had the gallery mostly to ourselves, but by the time we left it was heaving - great to see so many visiting. A cup of herb tea in the revamped urban cafe was a fine way to end our outing.

After lunch I led twenty people on a guided walk round Ferry Meadows which set off under sunny skies, though by the time we'd finished it was quite overcast. Parts of the lakes were frozen which limited the abundance of waterfowl, but with so many pairs of eyes the bird list grew steadily to forty-three species. 

Birding highlights of the walk were a sleepy pair of Snipe among the rushes fringing a shallow ditch on Heron Meadow, flocks of Fieldfare and Linnet on Horse Meadow, and a rather showy male Stonechat flitting between the edge of Gunwade Lake and the fence of Long Meadow. 

But what everyone was really hoping to see were the now famous Ferry Meadows Otters. We spent some time waiting on and around Swallow Bridge (along with many other visitors to the site) but were eventually rewarded with excellent views of one of the Otter family who seemed fascinated by all the people who were standing on the bridge pointing cameras towards him.