Hello to all readers!!!

January was an extremely eventful month. To get the sad news out of the way first, Sonny our thirteen year old female Asian Short Clawed Otter died at the start of the month. This being an exceptional age for an Otter, she was found in the morning with her partner Raymond who was still cuddled up to her.

Raymond is now very much enjoying bachelor life with his two sons; Biggy and Smalley, who have welcomed their dad as a play mate. He like Biggy and Smalley was also hand reared by staff at the centre as a cub, after his mother’s milk dried up.

Our little Joey was staying in a temporary enclosure at the centre, after his mother had a Joey early this year and kicked him out. He is now enjoying the freedom of the entire park and has settled back in very well, after a couple of weeks of TLC.

We received a female British Otter cub from the Dorset Wildlife Rescue on the 31^st January, “Ellie” had been taken very good care of by them but needed a permanent home. She has settled in very well and is spending the day at the park so that she can exercise and learn to swim but has to go home with a Keeper at the end of the day as she still needs feeding before bedtime. Our aim is to rehabilitate her and if all goes to plan release her back out into the wild in the future.

Some of the owl aviaries have had minor changes applied, with a few new boxes here and there, being placed in more convenient places.

That being all I have to say make sure to keep an eye out for your February update.

A very fortunate otter.

Early on the morning of Saturday 29^th January 2011 we received a telephone call from Kim, a lady living on a large country estate in our area, with an unusual tale to tell.

In the middle of the previous evening she had come out of her house to collect firewood from her stack. It was very cold, dry and dark. She was close by her front door when she heard a strange repetitive squeaking and then out of the gloom came a young otter cub.

It walked right to her feet and stood there, still squeaking, looking up at her and certainly in need of some help. Where it had come from was a bit of a mystery; Kim lives at the top of a large hill around half a mile from the nearest natural water.

Kim was of course a little taken aback at this and whilst thinking about how to help the poor youngster she retreated back to her house; she may have been thinking of how to capture the cub but it seemed to read her mind and followed her through her front door and into her house and saved her the effort!

Shortly afterwards the young animal was tucked up for the night in a comfortable dog crate with water, some rainbow trout and two pigeon breasts which, although not typical otter food, seemed to go down very well.

The following morning Kim rang us and we went over to see how we could help. The cub was a fighting fit 8 or 9 week old with no obvious illness or injury, we didn’t manage to sex it (after the third bite on my arm I thought it probably wasn’t that important anyway).

We had a chat with Michael, Kim’s neighbour, who knew that otters had been seen recently playing under a nearby bridge in an isolated location and we decided to try and reunite the cub with its mum there. Mandy and I did this once before and our feeling was that because otter mothers are so devoted she was unlikely to leave the area without searching for her offspring. If we acted quickly enough she was still likely to be hanging around.

We all travelled down to the bridge in question and searched for signs of mum, but if she was there, she wasn’t going to make it easy for us to find her. The cub wasn’t helping much either, it was in a small cat box we had brought with us sleeping off its large breakfast under a very colourful old towel.

The box cannot be opened from the inside by the cub but it can be opened from the outside by mum if she pulls it towards herself which is what most otters do. She was also the only otter likely to be in the near vicinity as our British Otters are territorial animals. So with that in mind we decided to leave the cub in the box near to the riverside and return to it at dusk.

Several hours later three of us returned to the site and from a distance the box looked exactly as we had left it; there were no signs of mum.

I approached the box and as I neared it I could see the towel inside, about the size of the cub and the right shape and I thought that the cub was still in there. But as I got even closer I could see that the red door had been pulled open and that there were large muddy paw prints both on and inside the box. Just to be sure I picked up the box and it was far too light to contain the cub. The cub was clean as a whistle when we put it in wrapped in the towel so the mud had come from something else. We are very confident that mum had returned and collected her baby. A very satisfying result and well worth the efforts of all those involved.

December update

December, December, December… where to begin? Let’s start with the weather! Over the festive period the park was hit with a couple of inches of snow, meaning hot water wasn’t working at times, fish were freezing under 9 inches of ice, and wallabies were wandering over the ice and getting stuck on the island in the middle of the Waterfowl Lake.

We also celebrated a birthday, our Asian Short-Clawed Otter; Sonny, turned thirteen on the 23^rd December. Her age is starting to show, so she is now receiving an extra meal every day during the cold months and plenty of fresh straw for her bedding.

On Boxing Day a small Joey (baby Wallaby) was found and looked as though it was starting to give in to the weather, as it’s mother had an early offspring this time around and wouldn’t let the older Joey inside the pouch, so the youngster spent a week altogether under the care of the Keepers and their families.

Our first main task of the winter has been completed, and now the Scottish Wildcats enjoy a 3^rd section to their enclosure they now have an elevated feeding station, new shelters and a steeper terrain.

Our juvenile Snowy Owl; Tooki has been free flying, though he’s not always as well behaved as we’d like him to be. He has sometimes proved hard to get back and had to be retrieved from a neighbouring field in early December.

The Otters have been enjoying the new additions to their winter diet which are aimed at keeping them warm. All of them love hard boiled eggs and all but Biggy thoroughly enjoy warm baked potatoes with mince stuffing.

The lowlight for the Otters this month is that Leah, a female Asian Short-Clawed Otter has had two infections in her mouth which makes eating difficult for her. She is going to have an operation on Friday 7^th January to correct this problem with her teeth.

Make sure to keep an eye on the page for your January Otter update.

Hello out there to all you Tamar Otter Blog Spot readers, November has whizzed by and the festive season is nearly upon us and a lot has been going on. In early November my Dad went to Essex for a day to collect a female Bengal Eagle Owl after our former female passed away about a year ago.

Only two and a bit weeks later Mum and Dad went to Dorset to pick-up a European Eagle Owl to company our male Poirot, whose partner Lucy sadly departed us after a long life, a few months ago.

Now we have closed to the public all the maintenance will be carried out and other projects such as extending the Scottish Wildcat enclosure will take place.

The young Fallow Deer fawn is now becoming rather confident around the keepers and will hopefully continue to be.

A bit of clearing was also in order after the floods in Cornwall, there was damage to the main fence after the local river burst its’ banks.

Talks have been on going about a release site for Tor and Libby, after a few weeks a site has been found.

Also on the 25^th November Biggy and Smalley will celebrate their 3^rd birthday. So don’t forget to tune in for your December update.

(or earlier if anything exciting happens)

My First Post

To all Tamar Otters blog spot readers this is “Mini Keeper at Tamar Otters” first monthly post. Well, the question is where to start considering you missed the last two months Dad!

Let’s start with babies because everyone loves babies don’t they?

Well anyway, in August my friend (Josh Brown) and I were admiring the woods at the park, when he spotted a young Muntjac fawn that was just a few days old, apart from being one of the cutest things I have ever seen its great to see the Muntjac flourishing in their surroundings, I promise to keep you informed on this one!

Recently in September two young Wallabies were spotted (well, the odd wiggly tail or pink leg sticking out of Mum’s pouch), I have had the pleasure of seeing one of them; they are around a month old.

We also have a new Fallow Deer fawn that was born in early September which is unusually late for a Fallow Deer.

Tooki the young Snowy Owl (short for Pirtuk, which means blizzard in Inuit) is now 3 months old and has now reached the juvenile stage of his life; he has become quite a hit with the public.

All the Otters are now adapting to the new season ahead, as the Asian Otters don’t really share the love of the wet and cold weather like the British Otters do.

The Scottish Wild Cats have settled in very well, their enclosure is also much brighter since the tree surgeon visited to remove diseased and dangerous trees. Our Silver Pheasant hatchlings have been moved to their own aviary in the woods. The Fallow deer fawns are also slowly growing in confidence.

Oh! And its also Raymond’s 13^th birthday on the 17^th October. Happy Birthday Raymond!

We have also found a Guinea Fowl in the Compound (where all the old appliances go!) sitting on twenty-four eggs, unfortunately due to the cold weather ahead they are unlikely to hatch.

So all is well, remember to keep a close eye on the blog in November for your next monthly update.

The Otter Keeper's last post

Ten months in to 2010 already. I apologise for my failure to keep up with the blog during the summer months, for us it is the busiest time of the year. It’s now the time of the year for changes, kids going back to school in September, summer changing to autumn in October, this change is a little different however, I will be handing the reigns of the Tamar Otters blog spot to my son Rhys “Mini Keeper at Tamar Otters” as he is undertaking journalism for the skill section of his Duke of Edinburgh Award.

Summer time

July is upon us already, what happened to June I don't know but we must have been busy so that's okay.

Recently my Auntie Joyce sent me a newspaper clipping stating that 150 toad corpses had been found on the banks of a loch on the Isle of Bute, Scotland. After detailed examination it was decided that these were otter prey. What appears to have happened is that the otter has caught the toads (probably with his feet; whenever I've seen otters mouth toads they drop them pretty quickly because they can't stand the taste of his noxious skin) and then somehow managed to open the toad and turn it inside out to get at the flesh of the rear legs without having to mouth the skin. It must be a very tasty meal to repeatedly go to all that effort. This behaviour has been reported before but I think it is interesting. Clever otter eh?

Back to Cornwall and all is well here. We've four new Fallow fawns and two more on the way (judging by the stupendous size of two does).

The two adult bucks are still growing their first full set of antlers and they both look very regal whilst the yearling prickets have their first set of prongs. Even though they are only two thirds grown the prickets have very high opinions of themselves and are intent on pushing everyone else around and making sure they get noticed by everyone; this isn't always a good strategy as they sometimes pick on the mature bucks and are firmly put back in their place.

The Guinea Fowl are laying eggs everywhere and not sitting on any of them though we've managed to incubate quite a few along with several Silver Pheasants. The Peahens have shown no real inclination to pair off, mate, nest build or lay eggs which is very disappointing. The Peacocks seem to have given up on the hens and are losing their tails already (which does seem rather early for them).

All of the otters are fine although Thor, one of our Asian Short Claws, had to be taken out of his pen and isolated for a week due to an abscess in his mouth. He started looking a bit lethargic and then began to be excessively noisy when eating so we decided to take him out of the limelight and get him some medical help. He was quite unwell for a few days but then picked up quickly. We gave him as many toys and puzzles as we could find/organise but towards the end of his confinement he was getting quite bored with us and seemed very pleased to get back home with his girls. Its always a bit of a worry putting otters back together even if they know each other but all went well and he was made a real fuss of by the girls on his return.

We have a new Snowy Owl who is now just over 5 weeks old. He lives at home with us at the moment and I take him to work during the day. He's settled in very nicely and is starting to look a little more like an owl rather than a rather lost penguin. His appetite is huge and once fed he usually nods off and lies down on his front in a heap. Yes, he nods off first then goes down which explains the heap.

The Scottish Wildcats are becoming much more bold than they were when they arrived and have developed an unusual hunting method. They lie adjacent to the fencing and stay completely still. Wildlife, usually birds such as crows, hop up to the fencing and then the cats strike with their feet through the fence and drag the unfortunate victim in for tea!

Lets hope for some half decent weather.