All the activity on the cameras in the past few weeks has been from the mother and her cubs but on one night last week there was a visit from a dog when the lake was still frozen. He arrived just after midnight and stayed for 3½ hours. He is a sleek and powerful-looking beast and, not surprisingly there was no sign of the other otters that night. This may be the same animal that showed up in daylight a few weeks ago.
I have pieced together some of what he was up to from about 20 clips from the five cameras. It took me almost a whole evening to edit this short montage (and over an hour to upload it), not helped by a spider on the lens of camera 2, so I had to try to crop it out and readjust the exposure, and the fact that camera 1 had drooped and was pointing too low.
Dog otters have large territories that overlap those of several females and that they patrol regularly to catch food, to defend against rival males, and to keep an eye (or nose!) out for females ready to mate. If a dog is not the father of cubs he may try to kill them so he can mate and produce his own offspring. Females will fight to protect their cubs and the local cubs are now fairly well grown and so less at risk. It will be a relief when they show up on the cameras again.
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