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Onward and October-ward!

a bird swimming in water next to a body of water

The Final Curtain Call…
It’s finally October, and that now means that there is only a month left until the end of the season; come to Hallowe’en, our 2017 will have come to a close. It’s been a weird and wonderful season, with some fantastic sightings, some drama, and a spattering of mystery here and there too. But we’ll save our recap for the final blog of the season! The only recap worth doing now is our look back at the previous week, and what’s been keeping us entertained there.

A Late Holiday for the Gruesome Twosome?
Kesslet and Charlie have been very mobile since our last big sighting of them just over a week ago now, when Charlie’s marvelous antics kept everyone on board (staff and passengers alike) entertained and gobsmacked all at once. They’ve been seen together and on their own too, with Kesslet spending a day footering around after herring early in the week by herself, and Charlie travelling east on his tod a day later. When they’ve not been spotted by the Spirit, Mischief has found them further afield usually, spending a bit of time with the hang-arounds, Zephyr, Honey and their little ones. That being said, we’ve had a couple days where they’ve went totally AWOL, and I’ve heard they may have been sighted even further eastward than usual when neither of our boats have found them. At this time of year it’s not unusual, as herring and mackerel shoal more often in deeper waters past Cromarty than in with us; this is normally evidenced by the good sightings of gannets you get around there at this time of year too. Speaking of our fishing feathered friends, we’ve had a bit of excitement recently, not just over our own incoming juvenile gannet groups, but also of some apparent sightings of Sea Eagles again! RIB skipper George wasn’t just whistling Dixie when he gave us a shout on Sunday about some kites bombarding a bigger bird over fish near Munlochy. We tried to check it out on the Spirit, but could only see one of the kites circling and nothing more. George claims (with witnesses too) that this distinctly larger bird was being harassed by several kites. Do you think George has found himself a white tail. or a tall tale?

Sleeping Soundly
We’ve been seeing a lot of laziness around the firth when the animals have been out and about. The seals are very nonchalant at this time of year, and thankfully this aids our sightings tremendously as they start to spend more time lazing near the surface when hunting. On Monday we didn’t have a single trip that saw less than 5 seals, and all seen for a long time too. The otters have even been caught preening themselves while sat on the buffers of the bridge; whether hunting or lazing around, we’ve seen them quite a bit in that area recently. Kesslet and Charlie have also been caught snoozing near Meikle Mee, possibly after wearing themselves out chasing smaller prey and travelling more to find them. It’s going to be a hard winter so it seems if this keeps up! We’ll just have to wait and see; with only 4 weeks left to go, who knows what might happen!