Late March and April update

The spring months are finally upon us and the park is now open to the general public again. In March, Lola was introduced to Biggy, Smalley and Ellie. The boys were used to newcomers and accepted her without a fuss. On the other hand, Ellie wasn’t so used to sharing friends and was rather difficult to please. Biggy and Smalley have been moved to another enclosure just in case they are the reason she is being unsociable. Ellie and Lola meet a couple of times each day and hopefully things will improve.

On 15^th April, Thor the Asian Short-Clawed Otter moved home to Tropaquaria near Minehead. This is after Thor found it hard to get along with some of the other otters (after his partner Sonny passed away); we wish him all the best with his new home.

In March we had a visit from BBC’s “Escape to the Country”, who spent the morning filming with Mandy for a 3 minute spot in a future broadcast. We haven’t been notified by the BBC about the date of broadcasting yet, but will post it here when we find out. A huge thank you to the entire “Escape to the Country” team who braved the only wet day of the week to come and film us and of course the otters.

To make a very good day even better Ellie caught her first frog on camera whilst filming with Mandy and Johnny!

Now the park is open, if you visit you may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of one of at least six young Joeys and a newly born Muntjac Fawn.

The Scottish Wild Cats have temporarily been separated; this is a standard precaution in case the female has fallen pregnant while she was in season, we will keep you up to date on this story.

On the subject of baby animals the Chinese Fawn Geese and the Barnacle Geese have been squabbling over nesting sites, on the island on the Waterfowl Lake. Two nests (one duck one goose) were sited near to each other and have been transformed into one large nest containing 7 goose eggs and many duck eggs. This “supernest” is being sat on by a white duck, a brown duck AND a goose. How’s that for communal living?

This means we could be expecting some new editions on the lake soon. Strangely there are thousands of tadpoles on the Marsh Lake and none on the Waterfowl Lake.

Thank you for reading and have a happy Easter!

The Saga continues, but with a twist...

If you're a regular here you'll know by now that Biggy and Smalley have been injured by Raymond and Thor. They've been separated and Biggy and Smalley are now back living with a British otter cub, Ellie; the boys are recovering well after a course of treatment and are much more like there old selves and no permanent damage seems to have been done.

It took nearly 3 weeks to introduce Ellie to Biggy and Smalley so its quite a time consuming process.

Our newest arrival, Lola, another British cub has been with us for nearly four weeks and is well on the road to recovery so we have decided to begin introducing her to Ellie and the boys. Over the last week or so Lola has been going in with Ellie, Biggy and Smalley for two or three hours a day of closely supervised contact (thick gloves on for the keepers, just in case). Lola (aged 10 weeks) can't swim yet so all of the contact is on dry land.

As usual Biggy and Smalley have been little stars and after their initial aloofness have welcomed contact with Lola just as they've done with the numerous other otters they've looked after. They actively seek her out to play, sleep, groom and are really gentle with her.

The same cannot be said for Ellie, who at about 16 weeks old is quite a bit bigger than Lola. After a period of fear, then shyness Ellie now seems to regard Lola as a toy to be dragged, thrown and generally abused. We haven't seen this sort of behaviour in such a young otter before and we're worried that Lola may get hurt before Ellie comes round to regarding her as a companion.

We had hoped to be able to introduce Lola to the group once she could swim (which won't be too long because we're giving her plenty of encouragement and opportunities to practice and she's starting to really enjoy it - so much that she bit Sonia the other day because Sonia had to end the lesson and get on with other duties!) but that can't happen until we're sure they'll get along. So at the moment Lola will be kept inside until a) she becomes a competent swimmer and b) Ellie decides to be more sociable.