Hi, I'm Rudi, i'm 8 years old and my favourite book is 'Tarka the Otter' by Henry Williamson. Its about the life of an otter named Tarka and British Wildlife. One night i was reading the book with my dad and i said that i wanted to see all the animals in the book, he said i should do it and call it the Tarka Challenge. My Tarka Challenge started on 1st January 2012. The book contains 89 birds, 54 land based animals, 120 plants and 56 aquatic organisms.

The rules are simple, i must either see each thing myself or photograph it using my trail camera. I will try and see each thing on my local patch (Ogmore River Catchment) but may need to look somewhere else in Britain.

Tracks and Trails

We went on a Tracks and Trails event organised by the Council. The man doing the talk was really good. We were looking for tracks and trails left by mammals. We found some hazelnut shells opened by voles. The man had a bag of different this and showed us a harvest mouse nest and a dead Mink. He also had some bags of otter and fox poo which are used as signs that these animals have been in an area.

Here's a picture of me smelling Otter poo for the first time, it smelled quite grassy.....




We walked around the park a bit more and our guide spotted this Otter footprint, i couldn't believe it, its the first time i have seen an actual otter print....


 The guide then found some fresh poo. Otter poo is called spraint and you can see bits of fish bones in it.....

It was a bit rainy but a really good day, I saw my first real signs of otters in my local area which made me really happy

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