THEY don't gnaw at the base of your young trees, killing or at least damaging them as do rabbits and hares - to say nothing, in the ease of rabbits anyway, of nibbling away your vegetables and some border flowers. They don't raid your henhouse. (Not that many of these exist today.) They don't, or are at least not noted for, eating the eggs of ground-nesting birds such as duck and pheasant - as do other animals, including perhaps, your dog. They are quiet. They don't put the heart across you at night, with dreadful banshee calls. They are not so many as to be a serious menace to fisheries. And, they are protected. They are, of course, otters,
You do see them on beaches in television programmes, mostly in shots from western regions in programmes by authorities such as Eamon de Buitlear and Michael Viney and David Cabot. But on inland rivers and lakes they are little seen, being mainly nocturnal and, if at large by day, mostly sticking to the cover of bankside grasses.
They do, however, leave their marks, particularly their excreta, known as spraints. You can follow their tracks, which in many cases seem to be on a regular programme. This rock, standing well out of the water, had often carried a spraint consisting mostly of fish scales or bones and the remains of crayfish and other crustacesans. Farther on, an oxbow formation in the river is mounted at one place and the narrow tongue of land crossed on the one path. As the track descends once more into the river, a spraint was always left, dark green to black, shiny and malodorous.
This was the pattern for years and then seemed to have been changed. Recently, it resumed with a remarkably large deposit of fish and crustacean remains on the rock. This may coincide with the digging of a large hole upstream, at the top of the bank, while the descending angle of the excavation may indicate that this is a new holt, as otter lairs or dens are called. You envy the western watchers and filmmakers with their daylight otter antics in full sight. On, this particular stretch of an inland river, the creature is very reclusive and inhabitants say they have maybe seen an otter three or four times in a score of years.
It is unlikely that they seriously damage fisheries, though they are known to prey on salmon coming up to spawn in small rivers and indeed to fall on them when weak after spawning. It is said that they do not eat much of the salmon themselves, but all the other predators descend as soon as the otter has had his shoulder, or whatever. But again, they are protected.