JON'S JOURNAL: The Fremington Crab Muncher

A couple of weeks ago we had the bi-annual open gardens weekend here at the CFZ. This is part of the National Open Gardens scheme and money is raised for local good causes by swathes of people who pay £3.50 a head to wander around various gardens in the village. Ours, as you might have guessed, is a fairly unconventional garden but something like 80 people admired the caecilians, said hello to our amphiumas and generally looked benevolently upon our grounds. I got talking to several of our visitors, including an elderly man who – like Corinna and I – is an amateur bird watcher. He told us that there was a really good birdwatching spot at a place called Fremington Quay between Bideford and Barnstaple and yesterday we bundled mother-in-law and Prudence in the car and set off in search of it.

It was not easy to find, but we were massively impressed by the different diverse habitats on offer There were reed beds, salt marshes, an estuary, mud banks, a shingle shore, and even a small grassland meadow full of wild flowers. There was only one drawback. We saw very few birds; a couple of small brown jobs that sped away as the car approached, and a small family of swans on the estuary about a quarter of a mile up the aforementioned shingle shore.

We let Prudence off the lead and she toddled along in a very well-behaved manner. However, once we saw the swans we decided that discretion was the better part of valour. I have no idea who would come off worse in an altercation between Prudence and a large cob, but we had no intention to find out, and - especially as it started to drizzle - we turned round and made our way back to the car.

At several spots along the shore we found relatively fresh corpses of crabs which had been neatly eviscerated and – we suppose – the soft parts of the body had been eaten. When I was a boy in Hong Kong many years ago, I was taken on a nature walk in the Mai Po marshes as something to do with my cub scout activities. We found similarly eviscerated crustacea and were told that this might have been the work of an otter.

I have always had a problem reconciling with this because – at the time – otters were practically extinct in the area. However, they are making a remarkable comeback across the UK, and Lutra lutra may well have been responsible for the slightly gruesome deaths of these unfortunate crabs.

Watch this space.