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Orca manoeuvres
BBC Wildlife
|January 2026
I WAS RECENTLY FOLLOWING THE 27S POD of orcas down the coast of Orkney with some fellow whale-watchers, when the pod pulled into a bay close to Burwick and stayed for around an hour.
There was blood in the water, so they had made a kill. Then they started behaving quite strangely by swimming backwards from a head-down position. Apparently, this is quite rare, and experts think it may be the family group dividing a kill. It is called 'orca moonwalking' and has previously been recorded in Canada but never in Orkney, as far as I'm aware. Roger Houghton, Orkney
A visiting robin
This story is from the January 2026 edition of BBC Wildlife.
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