Swamp Otters!

Okay, they are river otters, but they are in a swamp!

We've only seen otters a handful of times in the 30+ years we've lived here.  When we do, it's always a treat.  

What a blessing to be able to look out your windows and see a pair of otters!  Which is what happened on October 10th.  A great-blue heron and two river otters were fishing in the same spot in the swamp, directly in front of our house.  

There is an otter to the right and left of the heron, both in the edge of the grass.

While the otters looked happy, the heron did not.  (Maybe that's because the otters seemed to be better at catching fish?) The heron repeatedly tried to chase them away, but lucky for us, it did not succeed. 

Here's a video from that same morning.  You can't see the heron in it, but it was just off to the right.  One otter slinks into the cat tails in the beginning of the video, but the second otter takes a look over at the camera, then does a little scratching, then quickly catches a fish and starts to eat it.

When you see a photo of just an otter's head, it could pretty easily be mistaken for a beaver.  But when you watch them in action they are much different.

All the photos in this post are otters.

It's been hard to get good photos of them, not because they are wary or even because of the distance.  They were not terribly distrustful of me while I watched them.  The problems with photographing them are: they move very quickly, they are usually active in the early morning when there is little light, and of course... they can spend a lot of their time submerged.

Here's one from the misty morning of October 11th.  I think it was scratching its neck on this log. Look at those teeth!

Then it peeked over the log towards me.

The first few days we were seeing two.

Here they are that morning, with a bunch of Canada geese in the background... hopefully you can pick them out.  Both are in the lower part of the photo, surrounded by the ripples they were making in the water.

There was also sign that they had already been in the swamp for a few days.  Otters tend to use a prominent spot as a potty, and I found this on our old dock.

One pile of scat was obviously fresher than the other. 

That's the older one (an expert could probably say how old?)

Through the wonders of the internet, I searched 'otter scat' images, and ours were a match!

Also, I read that otters often choose a 'latrine area' on a prominent point.  The dock fits that description, though the condition of it would possibly make it a somewhat scary spot. Of course, an otter might not mind it collapsing into the water, but I was quite careful when I stood on it to take those photographs!

Now, back to perhaps more pleasing aspects of otter watching...

That's its head on the right and tail on the left.

After a few days, I didn't see two otters anymore.  The photo above is from October 17th. There was only one... was it a different otter by itself or did something happen to one of the pair?  I have no way of knowing.  I feel like this otter seems a bit larger than either of the other two though.

Here it is heading away from the camera, with a rather large fish.  It would swim around briefly and catch something, then go where I couldn't see it to eat.  While I couldn't see it, I could hear... "crunch, crunch, crunch" for a minute.  Then the otter would emerge from the grasses to fish again.  Sound does travel better over water, but apparently fish bones are quite crunchy and noisy to chew.

I tried to get good photos, but sometimes all I got was a tail.  

You can definitely tell that's an otter tail, at least! 

After awhile, the otter noticed me.  I was staying very still, but perhaps it scented me.

This was one of the few moments that the otter was somewhat motionless.  Then it swam around trying to figure out what I was.  It seemed to decide it didn't like me being there.  Here's what it did next:

Could you hear the hissing noise it made over the other noises of the swamp?  Each time it popped up, it made a quick 'hiss' sound.

Otters have been making a come-back in Pennsylvania and other states as well.  Which is really good news as far as I'm concerned.  Maybe we will see them more often.  I will be keeping an eye out for them.  If you'd like to read more about Pennsylvania otters and their success story, you can click on this very interesting article by Cindy Ross.  

And, thanks for sticking with me through the 'scat' photos! :-)  That's a first for this blog!