After a lean couple of months The Lone Kayaker has been in dream-world during the last week. Major wildlife encounters have been coming thick and fast.
The gales have abated and even though the weather has not yet sorted itself out into anything you might call spring, it’s a lot better than it has been.
Success has partly been down to giving myself a good kick up the backside and turfing out of bed earlier. When it comes to watching otters and beavers that really is appallingly early. But if you can be bothered to get on the water before the first Blackbird breaks into song, you might just get lucky.
This morning’s excitement was an otter on the river Torridge, although the first eye-boggler was a Roe Deer swimming across the river in front of me. I had only just set off and my brain hadn’t completely fired up so I was slow getting my camera out and only caught the last few seconds…
By the time I saw the otter porpoising towards me an hour later I was completed focussed in on everything that twitched or twittered. Ready to rock n roll.
I tucked in beside the bank and fortunately the otter chose to work it’s way up the far side of the river so I didn’t disturb it at all. As usual it came up with a crunchy snack after every dive, with one fish requiring a bit more serious attention with a visit to the shore:
It carried on upstream without getting a sniff of my presence, which I am always pleased about. It seemed full of the joys of spring, skipping through the water as energetically as any gambolling lamb in a field of green.
Otters are relentlessly hasty and borderline frantic and just can’t resist spending large amounts of time underwater, even when they are just getting from A to B.
They are a genuine aquatic creature.
Beavers are a bit different. If an otter is a twitchy sports car, a beaver is more of a Volvo estate.
They are measured and steady and are quite happy just swimming along at the surface for long distances. As we discovered during an early morning jaunt to the south of the county a few days previously.
Beaver incoming!
If you are ultra-observant you may have noticed the beaver’s head start to bob a little after it has swum past. That is because it was sniffing out a willow tree which it could not pass without stopping off for a bit of a munch. Those leaves are as fresh and crisp as an iceberg lettuce.
So it stopped off for a pit-stop snack as it made its way home to bed…
At the weekend there was a break in the wind, just for one day. In fact for a couple of hours the open sea off South Devon was completely smooth.
So that’s where we found ourselves…exactly the right place at the right time. The planning was so good we even organised a pod of a dozen dolphins as well. There was plenty of chuckling and gasps of amazement as the briefly joined us for a bit of a race…
So…Beavers, Otters, Dolphins. All during the last five days. Totally tremendous.
At one of my Lone Kayaker talks recently somebody asked if I ever miss human interaction because I spend so much time immersed in the world of animals.
They politely hinted that I might start to lose the plot.
Not at all…as was demonstrated by my cheerful salutation as I passed a little family resting beside the bike trail while I was pedalling back to retrieve my car this morning…
The Lone Kayaker 
I am curious about the bike… did you have it tucked onto your kayak as you paddled or was it in someone else’s car?
You give so much joy with these posts. Thank you. We are off to Scotland soon and are hoping to see the beavers in the loch at the estate we are staying on.
Good Luck with the beaver spotting…(very) early morning or (very) late evening seems to be the golden hour.
The bike thing is quite complicated and is why I don’t like doing shuttles. I leave the bike at the bottom end of the river, then drive back to the top, paddle the kayak down, pick up the bike and chain the kayak to the railings where the bike was, then cycle back to the top to pick up the car. Follow?
I hope my car keys end up in the right place. Often they havn’t.