Otters

[tracy]

Anyone got otters in your woodland ? Woodlands. Co would like to know about it for a blog on the topic. Let me know if you have!

Tracy

[greyman]

I wish!!!!

Trouble is our stream is seasonal and any otter wanting to make its way up to the pond would have to fight its way through the badlands the stream runs through to get to us. Any that tried would probably get deaded!

Greyman

[tracy]

Hm Greyman, whilst that makes an interesting tale, perhaps we shall see if someone else has something to add!

[Meadowcopse]

I had tracks in long grass too narrow for humans walking through and then found traces of otter spraint.

I haven't seen the actual otters though. The plot is near the River Dee on the Cheshire / North Wales border with a drainage channel / ditch alongside meadow and trees...

[Neil]

We may have otters in the stream that runs through our woodland. We have seen quite large otter-like footprints in the sand/mud at the edge of the stream, and spraints that could well have been produced by otters. Two years ago, the farmer whose land adjoins ours saw an otter by the side of a pond situated only a few yards from the path our stream takes through his land. Our stream passes into the River Lune after another mile, and otters have been seen in the Lune valley, so it is possible that some occasionally make their way up into our land. Our stream runs through a gully which is quite steep-sided in places, and the land around ours also falls steeply towards the stream. As a consequence we suffer a lot of run-of from the agricultural land, and following muck-spreading this can produce a lot of organic pollution in the stream, evidenced by deep yellow foam in the lower reaches where the stream passes under swing fences: whether this affects the otters, I don't know. It doesn't seem to affect the small fish that we occasionally see in the stream. We have used our field camera for a couple of years now, and have not so far seen any sign of otters, but we have not concentrated on the stream when we have been placing the camera. We will set the camera at different locations along the stream and see what we come up with. Neil

[tracy]

Brilliant Neil, can't wait to hear about it! And see some pictures!

[Compo]

We have Otters. Would you like them? Sometimes it's hard to be a conservationist. Atleast they killed all the Mink