An Otterly Great Birthday

Before heading up here I'd bought Mel a birthday card with a cartoon otter on it, and the little message, "Have an otterly great birthday". Et voila.

We popped out to the spot we watched the otter from on Sunday, given we had to wait until midday for a seafood place to open to get the food for Mel's birthday dinner tonight. Now normally we don't get lucky with lightning striking twice, but today it was thrice, as not only did we get the original adult; but then another, accompanied by a juvenile, giving a hunting lesson.

We watched and worked out where we might be able to move to without being spotted, and the result was watching the male adult not far off shore. There was a tweeting noise nearby, and Mel asked if it was a bird. Certain it was a Rock Pipit I passed it off as such, and then this guy appeared, squeaking away.

We started wondering if we were near the holt, so decided to move on., grab the seafood we needed, then head over to the mainland for a trip to new favourite, Sandaig. For unknown reasons the Kyelrhea ferry wasn't operating, so it was the longer drive round and over Mam Ratagan, that got us to our busier-than-usual* spot. But still we found a corner to watch the crabs and starfish and jellyfish and (briefly) porpoises.

Home to gin, champagne, beer, salmon, oysters**, squat lobsters, and a mountain of cheese. Seems to have gone down well as birthdays go.

* This whole area, especially Skye, has just got busier and busier over the more-than-a-decade we've been coming here. This afternoon, after getting the seafood, we headed down the hill to the Elgol shop to grab a couple of rolls for lunch, only to be met by a parking disaster that any major city centre would be proud of. Never seen that here before. And this is only May...

** As I was shucking the oysters Mel said the most middle-class thing I've ever heard, and which makes me realise I've married well, that comment being, "There's nothing worse than grit in your oysters."