Tarka Challenge

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.

Pine Marten

Pine Marten - Martes martes

These are really cool animals and quite a bit like cats. They have long legs compared to a Stoat and really bushy tails. They mainly come out at night and are really good at climbing things. We fed peanuts and eggs (raw) to this family. Three different ones visited, a really big fat one, a small one and a really small one. I think its was 2 parents and one little one. We loved watching them, they came every night. The first one in the video is a different one filmed at the loch, sniffing an Otter spraint.

Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel - Sciurus vulgaris

We watched these squirrels at a nature reserve (near the Coran Ferry) in Scotland. We were attacked by midges (biting flies) while watching and had to run back to the car, it was ok though because we could still see them from the car.

Its quite hard to see Red Squirrels in the UK as the Grey Squirrel (not native) has driven them away by eating all their food. They are really cute and funny to watch. A squirrel lives in a Drey, which is like a football shaped nest in tress made out of twigs. In the film you can see them eating peanuts out of special squirrel feeding boxes.

Otter

Otter - Lutra Lutra

Otters are the star of the book and i never really thought i would see a wild one in real life. These otters live in a salt water sea loch in Scotland. Their fur is not really designed for salt water so they have to swim into fresh water sometimes to clean it. The otters live in a 'holt' which is usually a hole under a tree. Their favourite food are Eels. They mark their territories with spraint (poo) which smells and shows other otters who the territory belongs to.

We walked around the loch and found some spraint. We set the camera up tied to a tree and this is what we filmed. If you watch closely you can see the otter flicking snot onto the camera which was still there in the morning.

Otter

Just got back from our summer holiday to Scotland. Its the first time we have been there and it didnt rain. We managed to see lots of wildlife which i will post about later. We managed to get some otters on the trail cam............

This otter was too close to the camera.......

This otter was too fast for the camera........

This otter was much too fast for the camera.........

This otter was just right.

Red Kite Feeding Time

We found some St Georges Mushrooms up the common, these are very nice to eat. But you must never eat mushrooms unless you are with someone who knows how to identify them, lucky for me that my dad knows. We never got to eat these ones though because when we cut them up when we got home they were full of mushroom fly maggots.

Ba Ba Ba Barn Owl

We went to visit Meurig today, I call him Mr Lucky. He lives on a small farm in the welsh mountains and is surrounded by nature. He even has swallows nesting inside his actual house.

We walked around the farm and he showed me loads of bird nests, so many i lost count. There were swallows everywhere nesting in the barns. He has a big lake with fish and newts in it and we found a Heron feather.

We bottle fed some orphaned lambs

He showed me a Pied Wagtails nest in his shed

Pied Wagtail nest with 5 eggs

Pied Wagtail

When we walked past the big barn a Barn Owl glided out past us into the woods.

We set up my trail camera and got some video of the Barn Owl perching during the night.

Roosting Barn Owl

Barn Owls, i couldn't believe it. In just 4 months we have seen Short Eared Owls, Tawny Owl, Little Owl and now a Barn Owl. I really enjoyed my trip to the farm and came away with a bag full of Owl pellets and some feathers.

On Sunday we went for a walk down the river and saw a Dipper displaying to its mate. We were surprised to see the Dippers so close to the sea, usually they live in upland rivers.

Barn Owl (Tyto alba)
The Barn Owl can seem like a ghost, white and silently gliding around at night. The Barn Owl feeds mainly on small mammals such as mice and voles and shrews, they also eat small rats and sometimes birds and even bats. Owls cant digest the preys fur and bones so they 'sick' them up as pellets. You can find pellets under places where the birds perch. If you break up the pellets you can tell from the bones and skulls what the birds have been eating.

I love Owls

Red Kite Cafe.....

Today we went to the Red Kite Cafe in the Black Mountains (Breacon). - http://www.redkiteswales.co.uk/

On the way we stopped off for a mountain river picnic. It was a really hot day and dad said that if i wanted to 'know an Otter i should be an Otter'. So we all swam in the river pool and played in the waterfall, even mum. It was cold but fun. When we got out we had loads of leeches on us, it took us five minutes to pick them all off. I thought mum would go mad but she didn't mind, she even went back in for a swim.