Frogs on the menu

It was in March last year that the camera in the culvert first recorded an otter eating frogs.  And in March this year it has done the same.   The otter took only nine seconds to go out and come back with a frog (I have shortened the start of the video slightly) and only 43 seconds to eat it, before going back to look for another one.

The second time it came back with a frog it sat much too close to the camera.  Fortunately it is a bit out of focus, otherwise it would be gruesome.  This time it took the otter only 33 seconds to eat the frog

The otter must be catching the frogs just outside the pipe which is a bit odd, partly because I have never seen a frog there and partly because it is all running water with no shallow edges, so not a place for spawning frogs.  I wanted to see what was happening so I set up a second camera but unfortunately the otter didn't catch or eat any more frogs there.  Perhaps it had eaten them all!

However, on the first night with two cameras an otter travelled through the culvert nine times, and the next night six times, far more activity than I have seen before.  At one point in the sequence there was an otter going south four times in a row, although never closer than 30 minutes.  As before, I can't reliably identify individuals but it strongly suggests there are at least two about.  The second camera didn't detect otters approaching from the water but could sometimes see them coming out of the culvert.  The next video shows two examples.

And this is how it looks in daytime, almost welly-deep even at the edges so not really froggish at all.