Sea creature, maybe otter, crossing lake with parent (6)
I believe the answer is:
fulmar
'sea creature' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both animals as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps there's a link between them I don't understand?
'otter crossing lake with parent' is the wordplay.
'otter' becomes 'fur' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'crossing' indicates putting letters inside (to cross can mean to go over or around).
'lake' becomes 'L' (geographical abbreviation).
'with' says to put letters next to each other.
'parent' becomes 'ma' (ma can mean mum or mother).
'l'+'ma'='lma'
'fur' placed around 'lma' is 'FULMAR'.
'maybe' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for fulmar that I've seen before include "Heavy short-tailed oceanic bird" , "Heavy short-tailed polar bird" , "Gull-like sea bird" , "Get an strange armful of this seabird" , "Bird of petrel family" .)