I am determined to make the most of the opportunity presented by the otter cubs so I am experimenting with the trail cameras. One new camera is a Woopeak TC22 which has a number of limitations but one or two good features. One that I like is its wide-angle view. I set it up with one of my Brownings so that they had the same viewpoint and made this video to compare the two. The Woopeak produces a duller, less vibrant, less contrasty picture so I have tried to match that to the Browning in editing. The video is from last month so the cubs were a bit smaller and for most of the time only two were in shot.
One big drawback of the Woopeak is its poor night-time performance and it is overexposed when multiple cameras are shining their infrared light. The Brownings cope especially well. In the first part of the next video two cameras are lighting the scene and when the otters reach the water several more join in giving a brightly lit view.
I have failed over several years to get good videos of otters underwater, especially in daylight. The wide angle has some promise and might have been even better on a sunny day. Here is the mother, each time with only one of the cubs.
I have never seen an otter in a tree before but the dog otter turned up and climbed into the base of a tree to leave a scent mark. The camera was set to watch the bank, not the tree, and all the action was in the top left corner. It was early morning in poor light and the image is cropped so it is rather grainy but we can just see what he was up to. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he had appeared with some wounds or injuries. He doesn't seen troubled by them but the marks over his ribs are much more obvious here. It is difficult to work out what might have caused them. To me this looks here much less like wounds from a fight.
Finally another view of the family from a couple of nights ago. This time all from one camera but taking advantage of the light from the others. All the cubs were sticking close to mum this time.
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