A couple of years ago, in February, there were otter tracks in the snow on the frozen surface of the Stilling Pool.
The year before that, in February, somebody took a photo from the top of the dam of an otter swimming in the Stilling Pool.
So every time I pass the end of the dam, I look down hopefully to the Stilling Pool for an otter.
Yesterday (in February), an otter! In the Stilling Pool!
Completely nocturnal? Very shy and almost impossible to see? I don't think so. Ten o'clock in the morning, swimming and diving in the middle of the pool and easy to identify (with binoculars) from the road by the bus stop. "Otter! There's an otter!" I cried, and got three witnesses. (I mention witnesses because my pal John met nothing but disbelief last year when he saw a swimming mole down there. "Sure it wasn't a water shrew?" said the lady at the Wildlife Trust.)
Then it went out of sight, and the excitement subsided. But by now I was completely hooked, and I started to walk over the dam, keeping an eye over the wall on the right. Sure enough, as I got about halfway over, this wonderful animal, glistening wet, came trotting towards me along the flat stone shelf at the foot of the dam itself. Camera? No time to fiddle about with cameras - I'd much rather have a proper look and the memory to treasure. Where there's a steel hatch cover and a protruding pipe in the middle of the dam (drainage for the sluice chambers passage, maybe), the otter paused to have a good look around inside the embrasure. Then, trotting on to a point directly below where I stood, he slid without breaking stride into the water. I could see him gliding under the surface. It struck me how his colour is exactly the colour of the water - cryptic in the way the light reflects from his wet fur. He swam across to the grassy shore, got out, walked on around the corner, stopped for a scratch, and then went out of sight, still on the bank, down towards the weir.
The rest of the day was a bit flat, really.
Graham