Cinnamon and Leap

Its over three months now since Cinnamon and Leap were released and although we haven't actually seen them on our regular visits to the site we have seen many signs of their presence. Today the kids and I decided to have a good leg stretch near to the release area. It was a nice but breezy day; as we watched the surface of the river we could easily see hundreds of fry, probably salmon and trout babies, in large schools in the shallow water. They were moving from algae covered stone to algae covered stone grazing as they went. In slightly deeper water we came across less numerous parr, (older salmon and trout babies from last year but I can't tell them apart unless they're in my hand and lie still!). There would be an occasional splash as they jumped out of the water for flies. When I was last here two weeks ago there were loads of large brown trout but we didn't see any of them today.

It can be hard looking for otter signs at this time of year due to high vegetation that obscures your view and hard ground makes it difficult to find footprints.

At about midday we found our first ottery sign of the day; it was a couch, a flattened area of reeds in the open air where an otter has rested. And the best news, it was still wet!

That's when we went into indian mode, moving as quietly as we could we moved to the river bank and lay down on a bend in the river about six feet above the surface of the water. We settled down and waited. I find that you have to let nature settle down for a few minutes before you can really expect to see much. That amount of time usually equates to Frances' boredom threshold...

Thank goodness we didn't have to wait too long, after 15 minutes or so we saw a long brown furry animal slink into the water about 100 yards to our left, a beautiful otter, in a bit of a lazy mood by the looks of things. He (or she, it was too far to say with confidence) paddled diagonally across the river towards us in a very languid relaxed sort of way. Head out of the water most of the time but with a dip every now and then to see what was going on below the surface. No haste, no rush, just a well fed killer out for a paddle.

Then one of those peculiar moments when you're watching animals in the wild when it gets so close to you and then its gone! We couldn't decide where! We waited for ages (Frances "can we go now"- and it was her who had spotted our otter first) and eventually moved on.

An hour or so later Rhys and I saw an interesting bit of movement in the water about 300 yards from our first sighting, we were both sure it was the same otter and only 15 or so yards away! But reeds, wind and lots of tall thorny vegetation contrived to prevent us from seeing it clearly. Very frustrating I've got to say; we can't say that it was an otter but what else would it have been?

Anyway, all in all it was quite a rewarding afternoon and we went home very happy.

Later that evening Mandy came home from work and asked to the kids, "What have you two been up to today?" Frances answer?

"We went to Tesco and bought you a new ink cartridge and we both got top ups for our mobile phones, nothing else really...."