Scottish Mussel - featuring Rudi the Otter

A new British film is being launched on 23rd September starring Talulah Riley, Martin Compton, and Joe Thomas of In Betweeners fame, along with our tame otters. I travelled up to Dunoon in Scotland to help with the scenes that, in the story, entail an injured otter brought into a wildlife conservation centre set in a beautiful location outside Glasgow.

Belinda the Otter with Sophie and Daphne Neville

The romcom is written and directed by Talulah Riley who also stars in what promises to be an amusing movie. Talulah was keen to feature our very energetic young male otter Rudi in a scene where the otter is released back into the wild.  To achieve this on film, without losing him altogether, was quite a feat but he enjoyed himself and the result looks endearing.

When one of the producers asked if I had worked on any other films featuring animals, I had to admit there have been quite a few. We had a baboon in the studio once and I became quite used to filming with trained elephants. I worked with a whole variety of exotic animals on the vet series ‘One by One’ from a pelican to a full grown leopard. In the mid 1980’s I was lucky enough to spend four months on Corfu making the first BBC adaptation of Gerald Durrell’s autobiography ‘My Family and Other Animals’ with Brian Blessed and a huge number of tortoises. As it happens, Rudi will appear in the next series of The Durrells, with filming due to start soon.

To see more about what the otters have been up to, please go to Daphne Neville’s website here.

You can read about living with tame otters in my book ‘Funnily Enough’ available in the UK here in paperback or on Kindle here

There are more photographs of the otters here

The DVD, which will be released on 3rd October, is available for pre-order here

One of our hand-reared otters who stars in ‘Scottish Mussel’

Wishing you a very

The UK Wild Otter Trust

I have been invited to become a Patron of the UK Wild Otter Trust - a huge honour.

The trust was set up to help raise awareness of British otters by providing talks at clubs and schools. It exists to help ongoing otter projects and groups that encourage otters in the wild. The trust is run by a really active team. You can read about them here.

The trust works hard to protect the habitat of the otter and is currently monitoring otter populations in North Devon. It work with anglers, fishery owners and organisations throughout the UK to ensure otter predation and behaviour is well understood. This has been well received and is vital to the conservation of this native species. To read more about the aims of the trust please click here.

 What can I do to support the Trust?

There are all sorts of things you can do. Click here for the UK Wild Otter Trust website and see how you can help secure the future of this special creature, which is still under threat. It would be hugely helpful if you simply told others about the trust and pointed them to the website.

If you would like to make a donation to the Trust, please click here.

Very Happy New Year from Sophie

Very Happy New Year to you!

Monkey Kingdom by Alastair Fothergill for DisneyNature

See the official trailer for my friend Alastair's new film

The Otters this Summer

Our tame otters, who romp through the pages of Funnily Enough, are still going strong. The have a huge number of fans including Her Majesty the Queen, HRH The Prince of Wales, Sir David Attenbrough, Joanna Lumley, David Bellamy, Angela Ripon, Michael Meacher MP and Michael Fish the weather man.

In 2013 they appeared on ‘Wild’ on CBBC, 

at the CLA Game Fair and Royal Welsh Show and in the Sunday Telegraph. 

They also enjoyed meeting people in Devon at the Honiton Show,

at Frampton-on-Severn in Gloucestershire and The Romsey Show in Hampshire. 

~ click here for their diary ~

Mum, Dad and their tame otters

My parents have kept tame otters since about 1980.

Over the years they have collected quite a few stories about them.

They are very inquisitive,

love eggs

and playing in the hay.

but most of all, they love being loved.

They appeared on CBBC TV in 'Wild' one Saturday morning recently
and will be at the Royal Welsh Show all this week 

These beautiful photographs were taken recently for a feature in the Sunday Telegraph

Please click here for the article published on 21st July 2013 

Filming our tame otters

Filming with otters is never easy. You can imagine what happened 0.05 seconds after this photograph was taken. On the other hand, our tame otters will spend ages drying off after a swim.

The easiest way to photograph our Asian short-clawed otters is when they are elevated in some way. Rudi is good at climbing but will descend with caution as he is not built to jump.

Often the script calls for an otter to be swimming underwater. Whilst this is possible it takes a long time to capture a sequence. A whole day was needed to take one underwater photograph for the scene in The Waterbabies. Here the little boy playing Tom is letting a young otter smell his hand. 

Much depends on the confidence of the actors appearing with the animals. Whilst Belinda is completely relaxed in my father's arms, she remains a wild creature and it takes her time to get used to strangers.

This little girl who appeared in the drama series 'The Secret of Eel Island' was wonderful with the otters.

Many of the scenes were set on a houseboat which worked well as they could not jump off it and there was no chance for them to off run into the woods.

Oddly our otters don't like swimming in our lake. I think Adam Henson must have lost one here.

No, he was after a pig.

At least you can carry an otter about and hold one in your arms.

To read more ~ click here

More about our tame otters who appear in 'Funnily Enough'

We still keep two tame otters at home in the Cotswolds. Bee and Jims who appear in 'Funnily Enough' passed on some time ago but Belinda and Rudi are just as delightful. Belinda is the tamest otter we have ever kept. Here she is, sitting on Mum's shoulder.

Rudi is exceptionally energetic, a real climber.

Belinda is now fourteen, which is a great age for an otter. Their life expectancy in the wild is only about eight years at the maximum.

They are in good condition and eating very well - on a diet consisting of raw trout, day-old chicks and rare beef - but as a result must be the fattest otters you have ever seen.

A card for New Year

Alastair Fothergill's new DisneyNature movie about chimpanzees

The official trailer for DisneyNature's 'Chimpanzee' ~ a wildlife documentary

Coming out nationwide in the UK on Friday 3rd May

The latest DisneyNature feature-length epic movie Chimpanzee from wildlife writer/director Alastair Fothergill (one of my friends who appears in the book 'Funnily Enough') opened to great reviews in the United States this year, and is due to reach our cinema screens in the United Kingdom in spring 2013.

It is narrated by comedy actor and producer Tim Allen, the voice of 'Buzz Lightyear' in Toy Story, and star of the hit U.S. TV sitcom Home Improvement.

For the Cineworld website, please click here

My mother and her otters

Daphne Neville
who has been working in otter conservation from 1981



In 1981 we learnt from a survey conducted by English Nature that there was a disastrous decline in the native population of otters in England and Wales. It was estimated that there were only 80 pairs left whilst Scotland was maintaining about 6,000 otters.  

My mother took it upon herself to raise public awareness of our aquatic eco-systems. Over the years she has been asked to hand rear a number of zoo-breed Asian short-clawed otters who have delighted the public whilst acting as ambassadors for their species. Thousands of adults and children have met the otters and learnt how the public can help encourage the revival of our native species - often about a topic they have not considered before.

Our first tame otter ~ called Bee, as otters smell of honey



It's clear that England and Wales were about to lose their native otters when Mum began working.  This major British mammal species is now reviving thanks to recognition that we need pure river water and undisturbed river banks. My parents advise farmers on how to accommodate wild otters and encourage the public to pick up litter, control their dogs, and drive slowly along lanes at night to reduce road casualties. They have been able to convey the difficult concept of water quality by taking otters to occasions such as the Water UK conference and The Otter Forum at the Natural History Museum.  The decline of otters in England and Wales related entirely to pollution: the discharge of industrial waste such as chemicals used in the manufacture of carpets entering the River Severn, farming effluent from slurry pits and slippage pits, sheep dip and indiscriminate use of PCBs and DDT insecticides. Otters are a vital indicator species, their health directly reflecting the health of British rivers.

Daphne Neville with Bee the Otter

The work is physically demanding – it requires travelling long distances, working long hours in all weathers, getting soaking wet, then camping on site - but Mum always finds the energy to give a child her full attention, even when totally exhausted at the end of a long day.

The rewards? One man told her that he had just completed a zoology degree, having been inspired by a talk she gave at his primary school years ago. That was enough. She has done much to educate inner-city adults and children who know nothing about otters. When she appeared at Countryside Live, on the Olympic site at Hackney Marshes in North London, I heard people look at an otter and ask, ‘Is it a squirrel?’, ‘Is it a rat?’ and ‘Does it eat vegetables?’

My drawings of our tame otters can be seen here.

with further sketches on this page.

Living with Otters ~

Sophie Neville with her tame otter

We have kept tame otters at Bakers Mill since 1980. These are not the large, secretive European otters that are native to Britain but sociable Asian short-clawed otters bred in wildlife parks that we've been asked to hand-rear, usually because they have been neglected by their mothers. We keep them, under license, for educational purposes. Their enclosure has a stream running through it and bath-tubs where they swim. They are cautious about of swimming in the deep water of our lake - unless we swim with them, which is a somewhat demanding experience. Being sociable the otters love showing off and are regularly taken both for walks and off to country shows around England and Wales where you can watch them and ask questions about otters.

Daphne Neville with her otters

My parents started lecturing on the conservation of otters thirty-five years ago, promoting the need for pure water in our rivers so that our native otters can flourish and re-gain healthy populations in the wild. At one stage they had four tame otters but they have never bred them, for these are exotic species that cannot be released into the wild.

There are thirteen different species of otter. They are often elusive and difficult to spot but I have watched European (or Eurasian) otters fishing along the coast of Skye, spotted spotted-necked otters playing in the Okavango Delta and Cape-clawless otters swimming at Knotsie Bay in South Africa. My mother has travelled the world to see to them in the wild  ~ to California where you find the sea otter, India where she supports the hairy-nosed otter project, to an International Otter Convention in Chile and has even swum in the Orinoco River with the giant otters of Bolivia that can reach twelve foot in length.

Our first otter was called Bee. This was because otters smell slightly of honey. She had so many adventures that my mother wrote a children's book about her. This came out in hardback in 1982. When she found second-hand copies for sale on Amazon recently she had a smaller paperback version printed.

With illustrations by Jackie Gouvier they are designed so you can read one story a night at bed-time for two-weeks or so and make good presents.

If you would like a copy, and live in the UK, please send a stamped-addressed A5 enveople with £1.20's worth of stamps and a cheque for £5 made out to the author, Daphne Neville, Bakers Mill, Frampton Mansell, Glos, GL6 8JH. You can find second-hand copies of the original hardback on Amazon - please see the carosel of books below.

Sophie Neville with Beenie the Otter and her first painting

Hand-rearing otters is very demanding. Can you imagine having an otter cub in your bed? They are hyper-active and extremely dexterous. Until the age of 4 months they are frightened of water and will not even go near a running tap. Introducing them to it takes time and patience.

I was once given the responsibility of looking after a lovely little female otter we were asked to rear called Beenie. She became very tame but I quite ran out of ways to entertain her. Once she was about three months old I put down a plate with a little water and added colour from may paintbox - watercolours in rose pink and sap green. I laid down a slab of mount board and let her play. The result was a series of truly beautiful paintings, delicately executed. Once framed they looked beautiful. We auctioned the one above to raise money for charity - not for conservation, as it happened, but for The Hyperactive Children's Support Group. It seemed apt. Beenie went on to open the Wildlife Arts Society Exhibition in Bath, appearing in The Daily Telegraph as a result.

Beenie the Otter with Sophie Neville in the Daily Telegraph

On another occasion we appeared on the front cover of The Daily Telegraph newspaper with the Prince of Wales and Beenie became a true ambassador of her species.

The  Prince of Wales with Sophie Neville

I have related some of the stories about keeping otters in 'Funnily Enough' but there are many more. You can see more of my own sketches of the otters - and their attempts to distract me on the Ride the Wings of Morning Blogspot.

 

'Otter with girl'
 http://www.sophieneville.co.uk/BEENIE/mainmenu.html



The sequel to Funnily Enough is out on Kindle and in paperback ~

Ride the Wings of Morning ~

Illustrated hardcover and paperbacks are now available from Lulu.com

....a gorgeous book. To me it is not about travel but about life. I really enjoyed it. Twice.

Some parts, I have read three times!

~ A review by Peter Bell ~

Ride the Wings of Morning (lovely title) is a terrific sequel to Sophie's marvellous Funnily Enough; further following her life of extraordinary exploits and adventures, now in southern Africa. Some horrific, most delightful, but all fascinating and very amusingly told by way of correspondence to and from her more conventional sisters. Her parents and many friends from Africa also feature as do a veritable profusion of Sophie's joyful and individual style of sketches, drawings and paintings that have become even more assured as time progressed. Many are brilliant! (Especially her splendid cartoons!)

Sophie has a wonderful knack of inclusion of her readers in all her writing. She is very observant, particularly of the absurd, the ridiculous and comic juxtapositions as well as the mundane and it shows in the great warmth, engaging honesty and infectious humour in her writing. The reader is privileged that she shares this somewhat maverick part of her life in which she gives so much of herself. Again! I was ever more captivated by this book but in a slightly different way to Funnily Enough. A truly fascinating read from much obviously painstaking work.

Only a full read of this marvellous 542-page book can do it the justice it deserves that no review of mine can hope to achieve. Unplug the phone, shut out the English 'summer' and indulge yourself with Sophie in the warmth of her true life in a world so far apart from your own!

She is a uniquely talented and individual person and this extraordinary work is to be deeply savoured and enjoyed. Tops on any scale of hugs and highly recommended by me as one of many here. The printed editions are to keep for ever.

Thank you so much, Sophie. Thanks also to Perry, Tamsin, and 'Mum and Dad'. I really look forward with great enthusiasm to the promised next instalment. Quite lovely!

Also available to order: ISBN-13: 978-1475244472

I had the most amazing riding holiday in South Africa...

South Africa 1991

21^st March ~

‘I wish you could stay longer.’

‘So do I,’ I said, as we walked round to heave my luggage into a waiting car.

‘Sophie, I wanted to ask: would you like to consider becoming my partner in the horse safaris?’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘I’d love to, Sarah-Jane but I can’t. I’ve too many commitments.’

‘Uncommit.’

‘It’s not that easy, I’m half way through my contract with the BBC.’

‘London will be horrid,’ she insisted.

‘Yes, but,’ I said, leaning against the car, trying to explain, ‘I’ve agreed to direct a long-running drama series.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s such a good opportunity. I can’t turn it down.’

‘I would have loved your help here.’

‘Rebecca might come. She’s a fantastic cook.’ Sarah-Jane and I pulled ourselves up onto the boulders so that we could see her little camp below with the horses milling around in the kraal. I tried hard not to cry.

‘It’s good that you came.’

‘Yes, it has been wonderful, much more than a holiday.’ I stood looking out across the vast, wild country through which we’d ridden. It was still early in the morning and quite cold. The mountains were standing dark against the rays of the rising sun. A huge grief welled up inside me; I didn’t want to go at all. Tears started streaming down my face.

‘Sarah-Jane.’ A voice came out of the darkness. ‘You left your revolver under the front seat of my Land Cruiser.’ The Game Warden had come to look for her. Time for me to go.

‘Goodbye, Sarah-Jane. And thank you for such an amazing time. I’m sure things will work out.’

‘Come back as soon as you can.’

‘I will. Goodbye.’ I drove off towards Johannesburg and an aeroplane that would take me back to what I thought I had to do.

At this point my life became very busy indeed - until 9th April, when my diary begins. The diary of my encounter with Chronic Fatigue.