below, but I do not know how much truth there is in this statement, for throat
and belly wounds are rare in salmon killed by Otters. Large fish are carried
ashore and held firmly between the fore-paws, and when feeding the Otter gobbles
and champs his teeth and lips constantly exactly like a seal. Small fish are
swallowed whole in the water.
Taking everything into consideration, Otters do no harm to fish, even on the
big salmon rivers, and he is a churlish fisherman indeed who grudges this graceful
creature his share—a share, too, that rightly belongs to him—of the mass of fish.
On nine rivers out of ten Otters live on fish which are not considered by the
angler, and on the tenth the quadruped probably does quite as much good as
harm by thinning down the old male trout which destroy endless numbers of
spawn and fry.1 Otters, too, kill numbers of salmon infected by the fungus,
Saprolegnia fe r a x ; and in removing these they are only saving the rivers from
pollution. This is well known on the Tay and Tweed, and Mr. A. H. Cocks also
mentions it2 as occurring on the Thames, where Otters eat these infected fish
without any harmful results. After all if Otters do kill a certain number of clean
fish, man has no right to a complete monopoly. The Almighty never intended
that such selfishness should exist on our part, or He would not have created
so many beautiful things to delight our eyes. A policy of ‘ live and let live’
is without doubt the correct one, though the man of narrow views is ever
with us.
On some rivers where salmon are plentiful Otters molest them but little, as
they prefer the eels which come up in August and September.8 In early summer
Otters leave the Cumberland Eden and hunt in small ponds near by for frogs and
eels, and their fondness for cray-fish is so well known that they are said to live
almost exclusively on them in some rivers. MacGillivray mentions that in the
stomach of an Otter killed in the month of June were larvae and earthworms;
and Mr. A. H. Cocks says they like snakes. Mr. Coward kindly sends me the
following note of another strange food eaten by Otters:
‘ The stumps of alders and willows which rise from the waters of Redes Mere,
one of the Cheshire meres, are covered with nibbled anodon shells. On a quiet
night it is often possible to hear the Otters crunching the hard shells. All these
i a keeper at Stray, Ross-shire, told me the old male trout are the curse of salmon rivers in the late autumn. He has
repeatedly seen from Stray Bridge (under which there is a spawning bed on the Beauly) a big male trout rush and swallow up
the spawn immediately it was ejected by a female salmon.
8 Zoologist, August 1890, p. 308.
* In this Otters do good, as eels are well known to eat the spawn of both trout and salmon.
shells are nibbled at one end only and in quite a different way from those gnawed
by rats.’
Sea-otters prey on cod, pollock, scaithe, and flat-fish. Eyton once shot an
Otter in the sea near Holyhead while struggling, with a large conger, and doubtless
it will eat all kinds of sea-fish, as Well as molhijsiland crustaceans. Hard pressed
for food, the Otter leaves the rivers and wanders great distances in pursuit of
birds and mammals. It is font of rabbits1 and rats, and Mr. Thomas Southwell
relates2 an instance of a hungry Otter which was killed in a sheepfold at Briston
(Norfolk), where it was found regaling itself on a sheep which it had slain.
Mr. Hill says that they sometimes prey on lambs in North Wales, eating the
belly first.
Otters will attack poultry yards and destroy the fowls and geese.* Mr. Coward
saysÿ ‘ One was captured in a village near here (Bowdon, Cheshire), some years
a go. it had climbed over two high park walls and entered a farmyard, undoubtedly
after the fowls.’ There are many instances of their fondness for water-hens."
Captain) Salvin possessed a tame Otter which would hunt them like a spaniel.
There is little doubt that wild <! licks are often killed by them.5 The habit of
pulling down ducks from the surface by attacking them from beneath is well
known in America I hunted with an Algonquin Indian in Canada who was a
professional Otter and Beaver trapper, and he told me that it was a common
practice of the Otter in autumn a n ® spring. On this point Mr. Coward in a letter
to me, March 21, 1904, says M§${ji
‘ I have been watching the ways of an Otter here for some months. Its chief
food is bream, but it has had a go at rabbits, and a few days: ago I found the
remains of a mallard, which looked very much as if they had been devoured by
some large carnivore. They lay on the rushes closf«to the edge of the mere in
exactly the same sort of spot where I find other remnants of feasts. I fancy a fox
1 Mr. Harting quotes a letter from Mr. Tom Speedy, dated December 17, 1885, in which the writer speaks of an Otter
robbing his rabbit traps (.Zoologist, 1894, p. 6).
2 Trans. Norfolk and Norwich N at Hist. Soc. 1872, p. 80.
3 See alsG the Field> December 3, 1904. In an editorial note to the same article an instance is given of an Otter living
in a holt close to a farmyard in Westmorland, but in this case the poultry and ducks were never molested.
, .p 4 M.r' _Beville Stamer> who has made an artificial holt on the lake on his estate at Peplow, in Shropshire, writes to me :
he artificial holt is always used now, but unless the Otters are actually breeding in the pool they only come for eight days,
and then move on for eight days somewhere else ; so they travel about a good deal. I have noticed that when they are here
there are very few water-hens and water-voles about. We find many remains of different kinds of fish, but eels are their chief
' When we opened the holt in May (1904) we found bits of water-hens, water-voles, and coarse fish.’
8 See Field, p. 93, 1898, January 15, 1893, and May 31, 1873 ; also Harting’s Zoology, 1894, P- <*•