Otter spotted in Highworth garden

We receive quite a few photos at the WSBRC, but not often shots of elusive animals like those sent in recently by Caroline Simpson of Highworth, who took these great pictures of an Otter visiting her garden on 1st November.

“I live in Highworth with a spring running through the garden; the spring is piped from our garden through to Pentylands Lane. Yesterday morning we could not believe our eyes when an otter appeared from the piped area.

The initial sighting lasted for at least an hour starting at 9:00am, as it came into our garden it disappeared and re-appeared from the pipe, the otter did not seem at all distressed. When the weather brightened up, I went outside and had a look around and there were quite a few flattened plants.

About 1.30pm I closed a window with a bang in the kitchen; the otter suddenly re-appeared from behind some plants, swam across the water and disappeared down the pipe. I now wonder if it had been resting in the garden all morning, I guess we will never know.

I managed to take some photos despite the rain and extremely dreary conditions.”

Caroline has probably had a once in a lifetime experience, especially as she lives in a built up area, and is a few miles from Bydemill Brook and the River Cole which is the nearest river.

Otters are normally very secretive creatures, and despite their large size they are very difficult to spot, they are solitary, nocturnal and elusive animals. The best time to see Otters is at dawn or dusk alongside rivers and water bodies, they may be hard to see as they are very agile and quick in the water, but they have a distinctive bounding gait when on land.

They were once widespread but their populations, although slowly recovering (they occur on most rivers in Wiltshire), are still quite fragmented. Click here to read more about Otters in Wiltshire.

Records of wildlife sightings (with or without photos) sent in to us help build up a map of the various populations of plants and animals and to monitor how these are surviving across Wiltshire.

We welcome your photos and records of wildlife in your garden, or when you are out and about and happen across something that catches your attention. If you would like to find out more about helping us protect Wiltshire’s wildlife by recording your sightings, click on this link