Making tracks on OtterCam

One of my ambitions has been to get a good video of an otter in snow, something I haven't yet achieved.  The closest was a couple of years ago when the lens was partly covered by snow.  It has been pretty cold recently but although the lake froze we have had only a few flurries of snow, enough to make tracks but not quite what I was after.  When I went to check on the cameras I could see that an otter had been past but there were also fox tracks.  Here the fox had gone to the left and the otter to the right.  There are moorhen prints as well.

A little farther on on the ice here is the otter's trail, footprints and a tail drag.

And here it is on video.  It is a short clip so I have made two versions, one with one camera and one with two.  I am not sure which I prefer.

The fox tracks were going to the left and were overlapping.

The camera shows the reason - the fox went out onto the ice and returned almost immediately. There was a 12 second gap between going and returning which I have edited out.

A couple of days earlier another fox had gone out onto the ice in the same place so I made a short clip of that as well.  The one above had a big white tip to its tail.  This one has a small black tip.  Both have long black socks on their front legs.

The last video gives us the opportunity to compare the body size and shape of the otter and the fox in the same position at the same distance from the camera.  The two will be about the same weight (～10kg) but the otter is much lower with short powerful legs.  It's a pity a badger didn't come along to complete the comparison.

I saw only one set of otter tracks - no smaller prints - but I am still hoping one cub has survived. We'll know one way or another in the next few weeks.