Francis Hickenbottom’s Nature Notes.
28th January 2011 2009
About two years ago, I was driving back from Pembrokeshire when I spotted a dead otter at the side of the main road road in South Wales. I stopped at the first opportunity and walked back along the main road to pick up the otter.
The otter was fully grown and, I think, quite old. It had been hit by a car and I could feel that the skull was badly damaged.
I once made the mistake of picking up a dead weasel and putting it in my car. The weasel was in a plastic bag and I drove only a short distance but the smell released from the weasel’s musk gland was indescribable and lingered for weeks afterwards.
As the otter is a member of the same family as the weasel -
Two years later, some of the damage caused by the impact with a car can be seen. Only the front portion of the skull has remained intact and there are fractures to the shoulder blade.
It is unfortunate to see an animal such as this become a road casualty but it does provide an opportunity to get a close look at a species which is usually quite elusive. Previously, I have had only a few sightings of otters and all of these have been in northern Scotland.
One of my early sightings of an otter happened as I cycled over the bridge at Tongue, on the north coast of Scotland. I heard a crunching sound and stopped to look over the edge of the bridge. The tide was out and I could see an otter lying amongst the seaweed, chewing on the head of a fish.
Strangely, my best sighting of an otter happened at the entrance to the main car-
The water was very clear and I could see the otter as it swam around beneath the surface, searching amongst the rock and weeds. More than once, it surfaced to eat small fish that it found. A local lady who stopped to watch the otter said that she had never been able to watch one in that way before.
Otters have been extending their ranges in England in recent years and I wonder how long it will be before I get my first sighting of an otter in Yorkshire.