Like Herding… Dolphins?
A Difficult Month
Whew, and we thought August was a toughie! September is proving quite the handful so far, with our wildlife being so much less predictable than they were even last month! While the dolphins seem to be moving around a lot, Mischief is managing to catch up with them on the regular, Spirit is having a little bit of a harder time. That being said, Kesslet has managed to surprise us, both on her own and with friends in the past week. On Tuesday, she appeared for the whole day, catching salmon in the river as they were heading back out to sea. She seemed to do very well, and left at the end of the day with a nice full belly. She appeared on Wednesday too, again on her own for a bit of a nosey in the afternoon too. Charlie has been missing for a little while, but from what we’ve seen from others further out, he’s spending a bit of time more to the east with some of the other social groups for a change. Mischief has found Spirtle on a number of occasions, and she’s looking fantastic. She and her sister Honey are still hanging around, and we’ve been lucky enough to see them playing around while the boat has been near Eathie (see our Facebook for a little video of them having fun!).
Other Finned Friends
While the dolphins have proven a little elusive for Spirit recently, it’s opened the gate for some other little fins to make an appearance; the harbour porpoise! For only the third time so far this season we’ve come across them on two sailings this week, with them being the most obvious yesterday, surfacing nice and actively nearby in the Beauly Firth. We hope we may see a little more of our unicorns of the firth as the season closes, as they’re such a special sighting. It’s also a special time of year for another group of animals, our birds, as our gannets are returning to the area. We’ve seen them on most trips over the weekend, with a picking-up wind drawing them closer to the bridge. We’ve had mostly fledglings in the area, but a few adults to help teach the youngsters about life. Speaking of youngsters, we haven’t seen our otter mum much recently, but when we have she’s been around in the morning. We suspect she may have little ones just now, but her big male friend Pierre (as he’s so called!) has been keeping us company as he hunts around the bridge. He’s been quite the show-off over the past week! And it’s not just the otters who may have little ones, as the greys have started to disappear from the firth; it’s now the pupping season for the grey seals and they’re moving more east to their designated pupping beaches. They’ll return in spring, but for now, it’s allowing the harbour seals to get out and about more, and to hoover up all the leftover fish in the firth! So while the season may be winding down, there’s still plenty to see, and every trip is different. Nothing like a little bit of extra mystery to make a trip really interesting, eh!