A river otter fresh from a swim.
Very cute...unless you're a fish or an amphibian.
Looking out from our deck at about 3 this afternoon, Catherine noticed something on the pond. At first we both thought it must be a duck. After all it's time for the ducks migrating into the region to start making pit stops on the pond and river, and we saw plenty of them last year. A glance in the binos quickly disabused us of that idea however. What was frolicking and diving in the pond was a good sized river otter. It dove and swam for some time, coming up every once and a while with something in its mouth. We can't say whether Otto had caught the last of our poor trout, a big minnow or some unsuspecting frog just emerging from hibernation. He even got up on the bank at one point before swimming off towards the river via the pond's drainage culvert. I'm guessing Otto is one of our permanent residents; there are some den holes along the far river bank that may well be where he lives. It was an exciting animal to watch for 20 minutes or so, and I'm sure he'll be back. Particularly after we restock the pond with trout. As is often the case, I gleaned the photos from the internet.
No comments:
Post a Comment