Otter caught on camera – in the Mersey

A RARE wild otter has been captured on film on the river Mersey near Warrington – once considered one of the most polluted rivers in the country.
The stunning image was captured by local nature photographer Brian Gort on the river between Warrington and Lymm, and local nature charity the Cheshire Wildlife Trust says it shows the welcome and ongoing return of this iconic and secretive mammal to the North West.
Once labelled the “dirty man of Europe” for some of the most polluted rivers in the world, Britain’s estuaries and industrial heartland waterways were top of the hit-list for conservationists, with the Mersey one of the worst offenders.
In recent decades however, thanks to local campaigning and national measures to improve river health, wildlife like salmon, eels and now otters are gradually returning.
Despite this, the otter remains an elusive character along our rivers, as Brian found out during his encounter.
He said: “I was sat hidden amongst the overhanging bushes at around 9:30am, in the hope of getting a shot of another riverside favourite, the Kingfisher.
“In a flash I saw a different movement on the water and had to quickly swing round and change my position, but fortunately I was able to get a couple of frames off on the camera, it was all pretty fast!”
The picture comes just a few months after Cheshire Wildlife Trust’s infra-red cameras captured a family of three otters on film for the first time ever, at one of their nature reserves on the river Gowy – a smaller tributary flowing into the Mersey.
Often known as the “River King”, otters disappeared from much of the UK’s river network during the latter part of the 20th century, with the then heavily polluted rivers of the North West taking a heavy toll on the rare mammals with numbers plummeting by the 1970s.
In fact, it was only in 2011 that freshwater otters were once again officially present in every county in the UK.
Infra-red footage of otters and more about what the Wildlife Trust is doing for them in Cheshire can be found at www.cheshirewildlifetrust.org.uk