SMALL, FIERCE AND LIVING IN A RIVER NEAR YOU!

With its red-tipped teeth and venomous saliva, the water shrew is one of the least-known residents of Wiltshire's riverbanks. Normally solitary and extremely ferocious for a creature weighing only 12-18 grammes, Neomys fodiens lives mainly near water, where it finds plentiful sources of its insect prey. 

For such a tiny creature, the water-shrew comes exceedingly well-armed with the venomous saliva it uses to stun its prey. They are also well-defended, by a foul-smelling oily substance, exuded from the scent-glands and repulsive to cats and other predators. 

The Wessex Otters and Rivers Project of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust has started a programme aimed at recording the numbers of these tiny mammals and finding out more about their habitat in Wiltshire. Once the project gets off the ground, it should lead to the first ever comprehensive picture of how many water-shrews live in Wiltshire, and where.

The Trust held a training course at its Devizes headquarters early in September for potential trainers of water-shrew monitors. The group, which was made up of representatives of Wessex Water, English Nature and British Waterways as well as staff and volunteers from Wiltshire, Dorset and Avon Wildlife Trusts, learned how to gather evidence of the presence of water-shrews at a river site.

Water-shrews themselves are tiny, solitary and hard to see, so data on them has up to now been scarce. The only evidence of their presence is usually a heap of cases from the caddis fly, the waterborne insect that forms one of their main sources of food, or a fleeting glimpse of a black back and cream underbelly as the water-shrew scurries on its way.

Mark Satinet, the Trust's Otters and Rivers Project Officer, who ran the training course, said "The water-shrew's preference for clean, clear water, where its food is found, makes it a good indicator of a river's health. We don't know how well water-shrews are faring in the county, and we need to find out in case it is declining like the water-vole."

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