Eden Wild Goose Nature
Nature notes from the Focus Magazine June 2021

Otter

There are some creatures that achieve a kind of semi-mythical status in ….well…my mind at least. We know they are there, they real, they exist and yet they are beyond us. Just too secretive, too clever to be seen by ordinary folks who are not trained, tuned in, immersed in the ways of animals that have learnt the survival skills of not being noticed.
 
A girl like me was brought up on books like Tarka the Otter, and most especially, films like ‘A Ring of Bright Water’. How the tears flowed when the otter met his end, provoked even more by the haunting theme tune which I have always remembered along with a few other tear jerking child hood favourites.
 
So I grew up knowing about otters but never expecting to see them. But somehow, over the years, my expectations have changed, as I have been taught to see a little bit better and have had close encounters with all sorts of things I had thought weren’t for the likes of people like me, kingfishers for example.
 
Then I was given a book called Otter Country, written by a woman who made otters her life for a good while, travelling round the country for a year and getting into a number of uncomfortable and soggy places in her quest to learn more and get closer to these animals. She proved to me that with a considerable amount of perseverance it was indeed possible, in fact increasingly so, to see an otter, as across the country river systems became a little cleaner and more fish and otter friendly.
 
Having recently moved to the area and living close to the River Eden, I decided that 2019 was going to be the year I did see an otter. My search was on, marked symbolically by the purchase of a gorgeous image of an otter on a birthday card into which I wrote some hopeful words of encouragement for the lucky recipient, who I fully expected to become part of the otter project. Well, would you believe it…even before I got to give that card, while staring out of my window on a wintry afternoon where all was rather dreary… suddenly there it was, playing in the river in front of my startled eyes. A real, live otter! Hardly daring to breathe, I ran downstairs, grabbing my binoculars as I went and dashed into the garden. That otter played around for a full five minutes before disappearing with a flick of the tail. A kind of ‘So long- and thanks for all the fish’ moment, if you will.
 
More sightings have followed, each as undeserved as the one before. No sweat, no soggy nights under canvas, just a casual walk along the river or once a trip down the drive to take the rubbish out, when I was rewarded with the sight of a mother and her two kits just playing, diving together, learning the necessary skills of survival.
 
How sad today then, to see one of these beautiful creatures, lying on the edge of the road, just roadkill. A precious creature, such a sign of hope for our troubled world, such a privileged sight of another world. It near broke my heart on that wet March afternoon. I know it’s the way life goes, I gather no otter is expected to live long, but still, so very sad. I hope so much that there will be more otters in the Eden, whether I get to see them or not. Hidden sinuous, silken treasures of our waterways, and a sign that repair is possible, and all can be well, if we choose.
Philippa Skinner.

Picture Local otter in River Eden on a 

Eden Wild Goose 'One Minute Mindful Moments' An Otter in Eden