Two out of three

I spent the morning waiting for a call-back from someone who'd left me an insistent message yesterday saying that I HAD to phone them today, only to be unavailable when I did. I find this kind of situation enraging, and was duly enraged, so at the point when I gave up waiting for the phone to ring - even though I had plenty of things to be getting on with at home, and despite the fact that the weather wasn't enticing - I made a snap decision to go out in search of wildlife therapy.

Knowing that there was likely to be something to photograph at Kemerton Lake, I headed up to Kinsham. When I entered the Water-level Hide the four people who were already in there told me that the otters were about, and about twenty minutes later a large adult appeared over by one of the islands in the middle of the lake. It swam almost unbelievably fast to the southern shore, and then along to the reed bed, where two smaller individuals suddenly appeared and greeted it with great enthusiasm. The three of them frolicked around each other for a while, and then swam fast in a tight group across the front of our hide, to the reed-filled inlet in front of the members-only hide, where they disappeared.

This isn't my finest work - at least, I hope it isn't - but in my defence I was jittering around at the back of the hide at the time, shooting over other people's shoulders. And the otters were moving so fast that even though by this time I knew I needed to reduce my lens to get all of them in the frame, I simply didn't have time to adjust the zoom. Hence there being only two and a bit otters in this shot. But this was one of those rare wildlife encounters that makes everyone present feel privileged to have witnessed it, so even if I'm less than delighted with my photos, they still serve to remind me of a thrilling experience. However (if only to prove that I can still capture a reasonable image), I'd also like to invite you to view the extra, which is a little grebe I photographed in the only decent light of the afternoon, while we were still waiting for the otters to appear and do their thing. There's another shot of the otter family here, playing to the right of the hide before they swam across to the inlet.

After all this excitement, the other four people in the hide decided to cash in their chips and go off in search of coffee, but I thought I'd hang on for a few minutes in case the otters re-emerged. They didn't, but while I was alone in the hide my phone rang, and it turned out to be the person I'd tried to get hold of this morning, who began the conversation by reminding me that they'd left me a message yesterday, and wondering (passive-aggressively) why I hadn't called them back. After I'd put them straight on that, we finally arrived at the crux of the problem, and it turned out... not to be a problem at all, but an entirely pointless box-ticking exercise. By the time I ended the call - gazing at my phone screen in frank disbelief at the inanity of the conversation I'd just endured - I discovered that it had started raining, and realised that it was time to cash in my chips too.

It says a lot about the power of wildlife therapy that neither petty bureaucracy nor horrible weather were able to quash my otterly upbeat mood: after closing up the hide I skipped damply back to the car, humming a happy tune.