On the way tonight travelling on a back road near a steam an otter crossed the road. Uv never seen one near here before. Does anyone know if there is a wildlife group that records sightings of otters?

Where abouts was it? I think there’s some by Gilcrux…

On the road by southwait bridge down the hil from 4 ways cross roads

You can record it here http://www.brc.ac.uk/irecord/ or on iSpot http://www.ispotnature.org/communities/uk-and-ireland

IIRC otters can now be found in every 10km square in England – not that rare, but still lovely to see.

Yes it was a very nice surprise to see one. Thought it was a rabbit or fox then it moved into the light and was clearly an otter only seen one other.
Thankfully i was going slowly!

Not seen a one for years and use to see lots of them. 🙁

Not sure I’d be able to tell the difference between an otter, a weasel and a stoat in the dark.

(unless they were swimming)

Otter:

Weasel:

Stoat:

Otters are massive compared to Weasels & Stoats. (You can weasily tell them apart cos theyr’e stoatally different)

Otters are way bigger.

(You can weasily tell them apart cos theyr’e stoatally different, very different to each otter) 😀

I spotted several otters in the west country many years ago.

They were escaped Mink.

You can weasily tell them apart cos theyr’e stoatally different

ROFL

Not sure I’d be able to tell the difference between an otter, a weasel and a stoat in the dark.

(unless they were swimming)
Huge difference in size! An otter is easily as big as a decent size cat, stoats and weasels go from 15-25cm, (weasel), and 15-25cm (Stoat), Stoats are generally bigger built, but nether comes anywhere close to an otter, 57-95cm, not including a 35-45cm tail, and going anywhere up to 17kg.

Otters had the fish out of our neighbours garden in Lorton fairly recently. Was a dead one on the side of the A595 at Lilyhall the other month! Good to know they’re making a comeback.

NO so they can bother them non stop again? Stress and drive them away?

They are weaselly obvious to tell apart.

Otters are massive comparitively.

Mink can be harder to spot the difference.

You could email your local wildlife records centre…

Ispot & irecord are OK but aren’t great (yet) for generating validated records that can be used to form data sets for things like planning applications etc.

Pretty sure it was an otter
Was quite close and pretty big and ran back to the river !

I saw a polecat a few years back – again, hard to distinguish between an otter and a mink in low light.

Polecat pic:

But very envious if it was an otter – a species I’d love to see!

Cheers scruffy welder
I will email them thanks for the info

I’m not an otter spotter, I’m the otter spotters mate……

Catch it and take it home with you.keep it in the bath, and teach it to crack oysters for you.

[video]https://youtu.be/vMk8KKWAq7c[/video]
Favourite otter related weather forecast gaffe

Favourite otter related weather forecast gaffe

How’s that a gaffe? It’s a well known saying, at least where I grew up in North Humberside (as it then was)

I saw a polecat a few years back – again, hard to distinguish between an otter and a mink in low light.

Well only if you had no scale to go off as again they’re much smaller than otter.

How’s that a gaffe? It’s a well known saying, at least where I grew up in North Humberside (as it then was)

It’s not but some people only have heard of it since it became a profanisism

They really dont do well with roads at all 🙁 in Swansea we used to collect the dead ones and they would go to Cardiff Uni for examination.

I regulate a fish farm that has a sacrifice pond for the otters, it is outside the electric fence and gets a few carp and the like put in it so brer Otter can have some food. The owner reckons they are greedy buggers as they scoff the lot.