otter – David Kotz

Shetland Otter

An incredible encounter!

While we were visiting the beautiful beach at Muckle Roe – an island on the west coast of the Shetland Islands – we spotted an otter running toward the surf. It quickly disappeared under the water, but I kept close watch and saw his head appear occasionally as he hunted in a shallow bed of kelp among the rocks a few meters offshore. Then – ahah! – he caught something. I watched him swim toward shore, a crab squirming in his jaws, just barely above the surface of the water. He reached the shore, but just behind a large boulder, where I could no longer see him. I grabbed my long lens and walked quietly down the beach, behind the boulder, and peered over. There he was, just a few meters away, gnawing on his crab!

An otter pauses while eating a crab, at Muckle Roe Beach in the Shetlands.

Shetland Islands

A magical place at 60º North.

After a week spent exploring Scotland’s mainland – if one can refer to the ‘mainland’ of what is, after all, part of an island – we boarded a large ferry in Aberdeen for an overnight cruise to the Shetland Islands. Located around 60º North latitude (more than 100 miles north of the mainland), this windswept archipelago in the North Sea is well-known for its stunning scenery and its hardy residents. We had three days to explore and found that was barely enough to experience the main island, and its hub settlement of Lerwick, without hopping any of the short ferries to outlying islands. Once again we were incredibly lucky with the weather! Let me share a few highlights and a gallery of photos.

The lighthouse at Esha Ness, on the western shore of the Shetlands.

Lyme wildlife – March

Winter becomes spring, and the animals are busy.

It was like a switch had flipped. February here in New Hampshire was snowy and consistently cold – the temperature never rose above freezing, which led to a fantastic season for outdoor winter activities. But on the first of March the weather immediately started to warm. The lower elevations of Lyme, where I deploy my wildlife cameras, lost all their snow — only to see the snow return twice in brief snowstorms. My wanders through the forests of Lyme led me to discover exciting new locations to capture video of wildlife activity… and to meet some of these critters face to face! Read on.

Katmai, days 6-7

A week off the grid on the coast of Alaska – photographing bears.

This post is part of a series about our photography trip to Alaska.

Thursday (September 1) Geographic Harbor: We visited the beach (and bears) in the morning. It was a beautiful day, with the clouds passing over and through the hills surrounding the bay. Read on, though, for photos of the bears and other wildlife spotted this day!