136 THE OTTER. 



subjected to the activities of otters, the sport they 

 afford would be much improved. 



Otters kill a goodly number of salmon on the 

 spawning-beds, eating only a small portion of the 

 fish they kill sometimes taking only one bite 

 from the back of the salmon's head, and leaving 

 the rest of the carcass to drift away ; so that many 

 an old Highland woman, who knows where to 

 look, keeps herself abundantly supplied with 

 salmon while they run, thanks to the activities 

 of the otters. 



So long as there are eels to be had, however, an 

 otter will disturb neither trout nor salmon, first 

 ridding the water of these vermin ; and so far as 

 otters disturbing the water goes, I have seen 

 trout rising freely in a pool while an otter was 

 hunting all around them. 



One hears the otter accused of robbing the nests 

 of game-birds after killing the brooding mother ; 

 but I simply do not believe such stories, for the 

 reason that I have repeatedly known water-fowl 

 successfully to rear their broods among the rushes 

 of lochs where otters were to be seen or heard 

 nightly, making use of the tracks the birds them- 

 selves used. The fact of the matter is that the 

 otter can more than supply its needs by the 

 natural procedure of fishing, and only in very 

 exceptional circumstances does it trouble to seek 

 a change of diet, such as when the folly of the 

 moorhen proves too tempting to resist, or during 

 the frog harvest. Practically the only exception 

 I myself have come across has been in the otter- 

 killing gulls that roost on the mud-banks of rivers 

 near the sea. An otter, coming up from the sea, 

 may conceivably have struck very bad fishing, in 

 which case it is not surprising that he is attracted 



