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Latest News
Kirikou’s got talent

Big news! Kirikou the otter is on the telly. BBC wildlife presenter Simon King (OBE!) visited the sanctuary last year with his wife Marguerite, their daughter Savannah and several camera men and women. They filmed her progress from when she had just started eating fish to when we put her outside in the otter pen, including all our efforts at physiotherapy. As you would expect, Simon was a natural with her, and we were very impressed with his communication skills with otters. In fact he taught us quite a lot…as did Kirikou herself.
To find out more about her story, click here

Simon King’s Shetland Diaries starts on BBC2 on Thursday 4 February 8-9pm and runs for three weeks.
               
No more milk! 

Peerie Mary the otter is moving ahead in leaps and bounds. She may have started out as a gentle soul, but she is now making up for lost time. Within three days of starting to eat fish on 16 January she made it clear she did not want us to handle her any more. In fact we can honestly say she has turned into as fierce a little creature as we have ever dealt with. A true survivor.

We were feeding her about a pint of Lactol (a puppy and kitten milk formula) a day by the time she started on solids. We carried on giving her about one bottle a day until 26 January, when she nearly tore the teat off the bottle. That’s it! No more milk!

She is also getting fed up with being inside all the time, but the weather has been too cold to let her outside for long. We had an adventure when we put her in the outdoor otter pen at the weekend. When we went to fetch her in after an hour she had vanished completely. After a long hunt we discovered she had found a gap under the bath we dug into the pen last year and crawled through it. It took a bit of digging and lifting to get her out.

We were giving her some exercise indoors and she climbed halfway up a wall, using a window shutter to lever herself up. We’re now putting her outside into makeshift facilities in the seal unit. All this emphasises the urgent need for a proper indoor otter unit, something we will be progressing with this year. We have received some funding towards it from the Shetland Wildlife Fund and SOTEAG, the Shetland Oil Terminal Environmental Advisory Group.

The sanctuary's stone circle has been completed. We have added a page to the site to share the story of how it was built.

       building the stone circle
Baby seals from Orkney

Softy and Henrietta came from Orkney Seal Rescue.  They were between two or three weeks old and came to Hillswick because Ross Flett, who runs OSR , had to leave Orkney for family reasons and needed someone to care for the two pups. For many years we have helped each other out in this way.

They would both have still been feeding from their mother so we have been tube feeding them special milk to try and encourage weight gain. They are also sucking on small pieces of fish. All being well they will both be released mid-September when they reach the desired weight.

Looking after seals of this age is basically like looking after new babies - they need feeds every four hours. After the next month there will be more information.

New babies arrrive.

What to do to help them.

Syringes with milk feed.

They will need tube feeding because of being so young.

Tube feeding.

Tube feeding is difficult but essential.

Special milk for tube feeding.

The milk is in the syringes and pushed through the tube into the seal pups.

Softy

Beginning to gain strength.

Softy

Sucking on a piece of fish.

Henrietta

Henrietta likes to lay on her back and view the world.

Letter of thanks from Natural Resources Defense Council
 

Dear Jan,

Thank you for speaking out against the Navy's new plan to deploy dangerous LFA sonar around the world. We already blocked global  deployment of this system five years ago. And with your help, we  are determined to do so again. By making your voice heard, you  are helping us move one step closer toward that day when whales will be safe from dangerous high-powered sonar systems. Thank you again for answering our urgent call to action.
Sincerely,
Frances Beinecke
President
Natural Resources Defense Council

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