On the trail of beautiful otters

10:02am Sunday 2nd December 2007

THIS year is probably best characterised as one of deluges, some extreme and catastrophically damaging, others just as intense but of shorter duration. The short term effects of these on wildlife has been bad but whether this will prove the case in the longer term has still to be determined.

November has proved to be no exception weather wise, and the weekend before last resulted in an all too familiar scene. It was hard to see the gaps between the rain drops when my telephone rang and the metallic voice of the Environment Agency's automated flood warning announced that the rain was serious enough to cause flooding on the River Stour and its tributaries.

The folk of Kidderminster must be thanking their good fortune that the agency had the foresight to erect the huge flood alleviation dam out at Puxton, as this has really proved its value this year, holding back waters that would have otherwise caused desperate flooding.

The metallic voice went on to warn me to take action to move all the cattle off the flood plains. Last summer this meant a long, wet night rounding up and moving the cattle of the Wyre Forest Grazing Animal Project to higher ground. At this time of year the animals are all busy grazing the heaths and well away from any possible threat of flooding. So I could relax.

In some ways, this heavy deluge really helped bring some interest to the natural world that November usually lacks. The heavy rains raised the water levels in the brooks, streams and rivers and as the high silt rich water receded they left behind a coating of fine sandy silt residue on any horizontal surface they covered.

This fine covering of silty sands is a bit like a blank canvas, which takes accurate prints of the tracks left by any animal that may walk over it. With this in mind a few days after the storm, I took a walk down the Stour, within a pair of relatively close focusing binoculars.

I always take the binoculars as it allows me to get a good close up look at any tracks I find, with out the perils of getting to close to the banks of the river. This is practically true of the River Stour as in the past the river bottom was dredged, leaving the non- flood height of the water a considerable distance from the tops of the banks. The water is deep, murky, not to mention cold, and flows quicker than it appears so safely has to a priority.

So being careful not to get to close to the edges, which might collapse from being under cut by the recent high waters, I scoured all the sandy silt patches I could find with my binoculars for tracks. Almost immediately I began to find tracks. It is like getting a glimpse into the secret life of the river and even though these stretches of silt were only a day or so old they were already criss-crossed with wildlife tracks. The webbed prints of ducks were every where as were the huge spans of coot footprints.

Mammal wise, there were the small almost cat-like prints of mink. Perhaps not the most welcome sight, as these savage predators were released into the wild with the demise of the fur trade and are largely attributed with the down fall of our water vole populations. Search as I might, the footprints of water voles were sadly absent, but it was not all bad news as one of the commonest non-bird footprints was large webbed and belonged to the otter.

It would have not been so long ago when seeing this on the river Stour would have caused gasps of amassment but on one walk of around a mile and half along the banks of the Stour, almost every 50m or so there was a small collection of otter prints.

Otters are highly mobile and these prints could easily be the marks of a couple of individuals but it still was very uplifting to see.

Despite all the tracks I have only one ever had a face to face encounter with a wild otter, they are such secretive animals and extremely shy of us humans. You can hardly blame them when you consider it was our needless persecution that led these animals so near to extinction.

EDITOR'S CHOICE