OtterCam in December

The otter cub is now on its own, although it is still in the territory.  I last saw mother and cub "together" in mid November although even then the cub was trailing a long way behind, testing mother's patience.  The water level in the culvert was high in late November and the camera has difficulty detecting a swimming otter with just its nose and ears out of the water so there were few recordings.  Since then I moved the cameras to a small gully at the edge of the lake.  I had many good recordings there last winter but nothing when I tried this autumn.  Now, however, the camera is again seeing otters every night.

There is a spot a metre or two from the water's edge that they use for scent marking.  Every time an otter passes it pauses to have good sniff to find out who else is out and about, and often leaves its own message.  This is the dog.

The cub is less used to the cameras and pauses to sniff those as well.

Here is the cub going down the bank, still calling its mother, although there was no other otter recorded for several hours this time so she wasn't nearby.

And a very interesting sequence from a couple of days ago.  The dog otter went down the bank and again sniffed the message board.  As he turned towards the camera we can see he has a wound or scar near his left ear, or possibly part of his ear missing, presumably as a result of fighting with another otter.

(I have checked back through other recent recordings but there isn't another clear view of his left ear to tell how recent the injury is.)  He left the scene stage left and two minutes later another smaller otter came out of the water, sniffed, and went up the bank.  They must have been aware of each other - perhaps the smaller otter was waiting for the dog to move on before leaving the water.

And finally, a distant cousin of the otters, another mustelid, dropped by to see what had been going on but decided against going for a swim.

These videos were all recorded with a +0.5 dioptre lens on the trail cameras.  I hope the quality is OK once they have been downsized by YouTube and Blogger because the originals are really sharp.