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.

Wet Weather

Despite the wet weather and my Dad spraining his ankle we have spotted a couple of things. We were out on a bike ride when we spotted a sick looking hedghog near a friends house. They took him in for the night and fed him some cat food to give him energy. In the morning he had escaped from the shed and was back out in the wild.


We had one sunny day and went down the beach. I caught loads of blennies and prawns and we found this whelk on the beach which was unusual because they usually live out in deep water.


We had a good day at Wildlife Watch Group at Margam discovery centre even though it was raining again. We saw lots of damsel flies, heron and coot at the pond.


We caught some cool creatures pond dipping including caddis fly larvae, lesser water boatmen, water hoglouse and a selection of leeches.



Off the list

Hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus)
Everybody knows what a spiky hedghog looks like. Unfortunately when people see them they are usually dead on the road. They like to eat worms. A baby hedgehog is called a hoglet.

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