A photographer has said he was “over the moon” to have taken snaps of two otter cubs scampering around a shoreline.
Niel Stafford, from Bedlington in Northumberland, said he was at the River Wansbeck last week when he saw the two little ones “come along and play around for most of the day”, adding it was “such an honour seeing them”.
Regular sightings of otters on a river are a sign of a healthy local ecosystem, the Wear Rivers Trust said.
Stafford said: “I think there’s a lot more wildlife on the River Wansbeck now, more than there has ever been.”