Tag Archives: American river otter

Continued otter fun – for the mammals and me!

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Part 2: surviving and dining in winter

One otter or two above? My otter friends produced an unusual portrait for me one day while they were running around an icy pond. 😊 It looked as if they had brought an extremely long family member with them!

Continued observation showed, of course, that the resident otters (Lontra canadensis) were all of normal stature. During much of the time that I was able to watch them, the temperatures were very low for North Carolina. In our central area of the state, temperatures in January 2025 were the 18th coldest ever recorded, averaging 36.6°F (2.6°C°F). Some days had significantly low temperatures, such as 17°F (-8.3°C) on 23 January.

That weather meant that the local ponds were partly or mostly frozen and had very icy waters indeed. In this and my next blog, I’ll share with you what I observed and learned about how river otters function in such cold conditions.

Their unique metabolism has several features that collectively enable them to survive in extreme cold.

  • Their very thick, water-repellent fur covers a dense undercoat that traps air. This fur is 10 times denser than that of the bobcat or red fox, with 585 hairs per square mm.
  • The trapped air acts as a buffer against the cold.
  • A thin blubber layer underneath their skin provides a second thermal barrier. (It also gives them extra energy when there is limited food availability.)
  • Shivering increases their internal body temperature.
  • Their high basal metabolism increases when they are actively swimming and diving, which also generates heat and helps them maintain a steady body temperature.
  • Their high metabolic rate enables them to pass food through their digestive system in about 60 minutes.

I was sometimes amazed at how quickly they caught one fish after another and now understand how they could process so much food in a short time. Their 36 teeth, including 4 long canines, obviously help them process the food they capture.

The otters also have corporal features that make their food hunting efficient:

  • Their ears and eyes are high on their heads, enabling them to swim more easily at the water’s surface.
  • They can swim both forwards and backwards, as well as tread water while surveying their surroundings.
  • They are near-sighted, which may improve their underwater vision.
  • Their whiskers are very sensitive, enabling them to more easily capture prey on dark nights or in murky waters.
  • Their ears close under water.
  • Their feet have five webbed toes as well as non-retractable claws.
  • Their traction on slippery surfaces is increased through heel pads on their hind feet.

The otter family that I observed on several occasions was very adept at catching fish. The NC Wildlife Organization notes that they sometimes collaborate in hunting by herding fish.

The pond otters whom I was watching had certain spots that they kept open in the ice, often diving down and coming up with another fish each time. In this video (click here) you can see one enjoying a meal.

Since I know very little about freshwater fish, I posted a couple photos on a fish identification page to find out just what the otters were eating. Group members debated a bit but then came up with these IDs.

Otters with bluegill sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus)

Otter with a large largemouth bass (Micropterus nigricans)

Biologists say that otters prefer to go after slow-moving fish, including catfish, carp, bass, suckers, and sunfish. Some of the fishing enthusiasts shared about what they had seen otters eat. (Then two men made negative comments and insulted the group moderator, so I removed the photos and left the group so as not to foment more dissension among that group’s adherents.) Here are some of their comments:

  • Otters are such cool animals! Have seen a couple groups while fishing/hunting this year in NC!
  • They’ll eat most any fish. Where I live they have cleaned out nearly all the fish in the ponds near the river. My old pond was teeming with fish when I owned it and now it holds a fraction of the fish it once did.
  • Ours eat a lot of eels. Ophelia/Smith Point, Virginia.
  • Here in New Hampshire I saw them eating what appeared to be fallfish last year.
  • I used to see otters pull rainbow trout out of the river when I lived in Idaho.
  • I hate otter and kill em every chance I get within season…I have had them drag 40 pound catfish out of my ponds and eat them…

It always saddens me when people develop a hatred for an animal (with the possible exceptions of ticks, mosquitoes and chiggers). In any case, I love the otters and will share with you how I saw them play in the next blog.

 

Two “otterly” fun months — otters at three ponds

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The past two months brought me some really rewarding wildlife sightings. While birding, I learned new things about a couple avian species (see The Wild Side). But my main wildlife entertainment came from discovering and watching otters at three ponds. (A reminder: if you click on a photo, it enlarges; to get back to the blog, back space.)

My first sighting came on 29 November 2024 at a pond near a large housing development. I’d been looking to see if the beavers were at their lodge when I suddenly spotted some movement low in the water. To my amazement, four beautiful otters came swimming by, heading in the direction of the beaver lodge (photo above). They kept themselves fairly hidden behind vegetation and then went to sit and play on the lodge behind some brush and small trees growing on the beavers’ home.

My next sighting was very unexpected, at a pond that had lost a lot of wildlife because the vineyard owner who purchased the surrounding farmland had cut down almost all the trees, shrubs and vegetation for miles around.

Because some migrating waterfowl still occasionally show up at the formerly lively pond, I visited there hoping to spot at least a few ducks. I was surprised to see a round head and sinuous body emerging from the water.

To my delight, I got to watch not just one but two otters swimming about and successfully nabbing fishy meals. One seemed to be less wary of people watching; the other would only stay in sight for a short time and then head to the pond bank underneath a lone standing tree as long as people were around.

I’m not sure what kind of fish they were catching, but they seemed to be enjoying good meals.

My next sighting was at the Sandy Creek Park in a nearby town. An otter suddenly popped up and began swimming low in the water among the vegetation. Then it swam across the pond to a beaver lodge and there caught some animal for a meal.

The mammal was quite far away and my camera lens wasn’t strong enough to get good views. In the end, I figured that it had caught a crayfish or something similar.

My best views of otters came when I returned to the pond where I had first spotted the quartet. Despite repeated visits, I didn’t see four of them anymore but only a trio.

It might be that the fourth one was a male who went off on his own. When winter comes and food is less accessible, otter groups tend to disperse so that each family member has access to food and food stores are not depleted.

River otters tend to roam over a specific territory, staying in one spot for one to four weeks. In the summertime, they may travel within an area of 20 square miles, but in winter they expand their territory upwards to about 60 square miles to maximize their success in finding food.

Fish are a dietary staple, especially in winter, but they also eat crayfish, crabs, turtles, amphibians, reptiles, insects, and even occasionally birds or small mammals. Besides the otter at Sandy Creek Park, I only saw them eating fish, but it was amazing how many fish they could catch and eat in quick succession.

In fact, their ability to almost always come up with a fish after going under water or dunking their head into the pond must account for the fact that the resident great blue heron tended to stick close to them. The heron would watch intently where they were fishing and when they moved to another area of the pond, the large bird would follow.

At one point, the heron stayed so close to a fishing otter that I wondered if the large bird was going to attempt to snatch a fish away, but that didn’t happen!

The hungry avian finally did catch fish, too.

In my next blog, I’ll show you some of the otters’ successful winter fishing forays, let you know how they manage to keep swimming in icy waters and outside temperatures of 15-30°F, and let you see how the otters were playing.

 

 

A cold but rewarding day at the pond!

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On 29 November our area had its first really cold morning of the season, dawning at 25°F (-3.88°C). I fortunately had gotten my spring bulbs and seeds in the ground a few days earlier, so I was mostly ok with it except feeling bad for the outside critters having to deal with morning frost in the coming weeks.

There were still a few very hardy flowers blooming in the yard; a few were eaten by the deer, which was ok with me. However, the neighborhood honeybees had slim pickings, which may be why I suddenly found them swarming the nectar feeder which I’ve left in place in case a winter hummer shows up!

So before doing needed grocery shopping, I stopped at a local pond. The parking area near the path to the water is in an area usually filled with birds but scarcely any wildlife was to be seen. A song sparrow briefly popped up, but it was very quiet. Finally, I heard some pecking and there was a yellow-bellied sapsucker working on a new row of sap holes in a nearby tree.

 

Walking towards the pond, I crossed a bridge over the feeder creek. Usually, this area has numerous birds but not a sound or movement was present. When I started nearing the pond, I finally spotted mallard ducks — 16 as far as my count through the trees could tell.

A pair of geese was perched on a stump, and they seemed to be just chilling out, preening, paddling and resting.

Scarcely any other birds were around; a few sparrows popped up quickly and some turkey vultures were parked in area trees.

   

Finally, I noticed the great blue heron perched on the beaver lodge, not moving a muscle or feather. Its statue imitation was impressive. I began walking back and forth along the shore, hoping to spot wildlife but the cold even had the bugs laying low.

After a while, I figured it was cold enough to make the visit shorter than usual when I was stopped by the sight of a couple new dark lumps on the beaver lodge behind dried vegetation..

It turned out to be a couple of otters — a delightful sighting to be sure even if not clear as they were far away behind dried vegetation.

After waiting to see if the otters would leave their resting spot, I decided they had settled down for a lengthy nap. As I turned to leave, I suddenly saw movement and the two otters slipped into the water, with me turning and trying to get a few quick photos.

They swam quickly to the beaver dam, crossed and dropped down to the lower swamp on the other side.

I counted myself lucky to have seen them and was pleased with this unexpected encounter. I stared at the dam hoping for some movement, saw nothing and again began to leave when suddenly a head popped up again.

To my astonishment, not one, not two, but four otters came over the dam and swam over to the far shore behind the beaver lodge. They were going fast and I only got glimpses, but it was still so rewarding to see them.

They were underwater much of the time but finally popped into view at the edge of the pond vegetation behind the lodge.

They were obviously feeding on something, but it wasn’t possible to see what they were catching.

They moved along the shoreline, swimming together and alone.

The otters must have been having considerable feeding success because the heron left the beaver lodge and began following them along the shoreline.

I tried to follow along on the other side of the pond and caught glimpses of them until they disappeared into a vegetation-heavy area of the pond. The heron kept following them so they must have been good guides to where the foraging was rewarding.

It finally became time to really call an end to my pond visit, so I left along the path which was still almost wholly silent without bird song. Back near my car, the sapsucker was still busy in the same tree working on the same line of new sap holes. The woodpecker had obviously found itself a good feeding spot and I felt fortunate, too, to have had a surprise encounter with those beautiful sleek water mammals at the pond.

        

This sighting was indeed something to be thankful for the day after Thanksgiving. It followed my chance a few days earlier to see our county’s first tundra swan on record. A friend alerted me to its presence and many people went to our county’s water reservoir, where the bird was hanging out far across the lake. Some very cool sightings to mark a holiday week! 😊

(Apologies for the somewhat blurry photos but the wildlife was fairly distant and my camera lens is no longer working optimally. But I still wanted to share the good fortune of these wildlife sightings!)

Nature Photo Challenge – Wild Animals

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While I edit photos for my next “regular” blog, I was inspired by Denzil’s 28th Nature Photo Challenge to post a few photos of wild animals I’ve encountered. While I could have chosen to show some of the more exotic ones (e.g., rhinos, elephants, lions, etc.), I thought I’d introduce you to some species that live in my general area.

Among the insects that I enjoy watching are the snowberry clearwing moths (Hemaris diffinis). The first time I saw a clearwing moth at some distance, I wondered if there was a tiny hummingbird with which I was totally unfamiliar. When I got closer, I realized it was no hummer but some amazing kind of flying insect. I still find them fascinating creatures.

The saddleback moth caterpillar (Acharia stimulea) is another favorite from the insect world. Fortunately, I found out that they have a painful sting before I ever touched one. This past week, I was lucky to see one twice. The first time was when John, an odonate expert of my acquaintance, called me over to see one he had found. He had unfortunately been stung but said the pain was tolerable: I hope he didn’t suffer for long. Several days later, I spotted another saddleback while on another nature walk.

 The bright golden color of a common sawfly caught my eye after having seen the first saddleback. It was quite a striking fly with its black and white “decorative” highlights.

Shortly afterwards, my day was made when I spotted one of my favorite spiders, an adorable jumping spider that had caught itself a sizeable meal.

A couple days ago I startled an Eastern rat snake (Pantherophis alleghaniensis) as I passed by it on a path. I hadn’t realized it was there until the herp reared up and quickly crossed the path in front of me. I think we were both startled and I didn’t manage to get a photo. Today I did a U-turn to hop out of my car to carry an Eastern box turtle  (Terrapene carolina Carolina) to safety as it began crossing a busy road. One woman stopped to thank me, while another driver gave me a somewhat irritated look. The turtle above was not the rescue but had similar colors to the turtle today.

My pond is quite alive with lots of tadpoles and small frogs. This green frog (Lithobates clamitans) is one of the larger aquatic yard denizens.

I haven’t seen a wide variety of mammals lately except for the ubiquitous Eastern chipmunks, gray squirrels, Eastern cottontail rabbits and Eastern white-tailed deer in my yard. It’s always a treat for me to see some of the aquatic ones when out on walks, such as the river otters (Lontra canadensis) and the North American beaver (Castor canadensis).

I’ve seen the hispid cotton rats (Sigmodon hispidus) in three different North Carolina nature reserves. To my surprise, this year I also spotted one in my backyard, but I only saw it once. They are known to scurry away quickly when spotted.

And then there are the birds — they are by far the order of animals that I see most often and most easily. They are also delightful because of their great variety. Just recently, I saw a rare avian visitor to my yard, the black-and-white warbler (Mniotilta varia). I usually see them in nature reserves.

In contrast, the lovely little chipping sparrows (Spizella passerina) are birds that I often see in my yard and at my feeders. This pair was resting in a tree top near a former dairy farm, which is now being turned into a vast vineyard. Much of the birds’ habitat has been removed during this changeover to my great disappointment.

One bird that still remains in that area is the solitary sandpiper (Tringa solitaria), which is easily recognizable by its habit of bobbing its rear end as it walks along shores looking for food.

The sandpiper is not the only shorebird currently drawing birders in our area. Many varied species have been turning up at local lakes, giving birders the opportunity to see “lifers” (birds seen in person for the first time). The limpkin (Aramus guarauna) is one such bird for me — it was a treat to see it looking for clams and molluscs at a local lake.

Next blog: making acquaintance with a bird I’d like to imitate!

 

 

Marvelous mammals, part 2 – at parks and reserves

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Some of the mammals that I see when visiting parks and nature reserves are the same as my yard visitors (see the previous blog). For example, on a recent walk at a wetland area, an Eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) decided to engage me in conversation as I walked under its tree. It would descend a few feet, look at me intently and utter sounds.

 

I responded (in English) and it would look at me quizzically, ascend the tree and then turn around to come closer again.

This went on for about 10 minutes. When I walked further on, another squirrel was perched on a small limb eating a snack and stopped to observe me as I passed under its tree. There was some communication going on between us, although I confess that I wasn’t sure what she was saying.

 

Other mammals I only see rarely in my yard but a little more often in public natural areas. An example is the groundhog (Marmota monax), which also goes by the common name of woodchuck.

Last year, I had a groundhog come up on my front porch where I had a container garden; it was really enjoying the tomatoes to my surprise! More recently, a friend and I were stopped on a road through agricultural fields when a groundhog emerged from a culvert. The animal looked around at its leisure and then eventually retreated to the culvert when our car began moving forward.

 

And then there are mammals that I don’t see at all where I live since my yard is not close to wetlands, bogs or rivers. A recent trip to the North Carolina (NC) Atlantic Coast gave me a chance to see a muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus), which some Native Americans called a musquash. Fellow birders alerted me to its presence as it was sitting at the edge of a small pond where they had been watching water birds.

The muskrat can be distinguished from the nutria, which looks very similar, by a couple features explained to me by a park employee. The muskrat has much less prominent whiskers than the nutria and its tail has somewhat flattened sides. Overall, they are smaller than nutria. I do think a muskrat I saw in our nearby Haw River was fairly big.

Muskrats dig burrows into river banks and the sides of ponds and canals; sometimes, they also will construct a large lodge atop mud and roots in marshes. Their babies are born blind and hairless; as they mature, they get either brown (70%) or black fur (30%).

At the coast, we also got to see the nutria (Myocastor coypus), swimming at the edge of a wetland near a road. These rodents are native to South America and were introduced to the USA in the 1800s; they are now found in 22 states. In North Carolina, they are only found in the coastal and Eastern parts of the state.

 

 

Nutrias are larger than muskrats and smaller than beavers; their very white whiskers are distinctive.

They construct floating platforms with vegetation on which they rest, groom and eat. They may live in colonies of up to 15-20 individuals. Their eyesight is poor and they sense danger through their sense of hearing.

They are considered a nuisance animal as they can convert marshes to open water and are known to eat farmers’ crops. Their numbers have partly been kept down in NC because of hunting (trapping) and partly because they have an elevated mortality during cold winters, to which they are not adapted. I’m guessing that the nutria will not have an easy future in this state.

Another water-loving mammal that has had problems with humans is the North American beaver (Castor canandensis). One of my book clubs is currently reading Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb. He details how they were trapped and killed by the millions when Europeans arrived in North America and how this changed much of the landscape throughout the country – often causing a deteriorating environment.

In NC, the last native beaver was trapped in 1897; we only have them now because the NC Wildlife Resources Commission reintroduced beavers in the 1930s. Still, these mammals often face negative reactions from human neighbors, who frequently have them “removed”.

Goldfarb details different ways in which humans and beavers can peacefully co-exist. He notes one way (among many others) in which they can be quite beneficial: “As the climate warms, more precipitation is falling as rain rather than snow. Instead of remaining in snowpack and gradually melting throughout the course of the spring and summer and fall and keeping rivers and streams wet well into the dry season, now all that precipitation is falling as rain. Any entity that can store water on the landscape, that can keep water high in some of these mountain headwaters in places like the Cascades or the Sierra, becomes incredibly valuable. What stores water better than a beaver? Basically nothing.”

Beavers live in a several places not far from my home. At the Sandy Creek Park, the beavers were posing a challenge as their dams had led to flooding of a paved path which makes the park more accessible to people in wheelchairs, with strollers, etc. Beaver deceivers (pond levelers) have been installed and the pond level has decreased; the beavers appear to be adjusting to the new situation.

At another site, neighboring home-owners took sides on whether the beavers were a community benefit. Some were in favor of the beavers and hired wildlife biologists to help them figure out how to install beaver deceivers. Others opposed the mammals’ presence (defacing a fan’s tribute to the beavers on a bridge) and a homeowners association had a beaver lodge destroyed and the wetland drained in order to drive the beavers away. The variety of wildlife in the area immediately declined greatly.

 

As the NC Wildlife Resources Commission notes: “By damming streams and forming shallow ponds, beavers create wetlands. These wetlands provide habitat for a tremendous diversity of plants, invertebrates, and wildlife, such as waterfowl, deer, bats, otter, herons, songbirds, raptors, salamanders, turtles, frogs, and fish.”

Fortunately, one lodge was left there and a pair of beavers, who mate for life, is still in residence. Their lodge is currently also being used by another water-loving mammal that I love to see — the American river otter (Lutra canadensis lataxina). On a recent very overcast day, I was lucky to see three of them.

These beautiful mammals have also lost much ground in the USA due to trapping, wetland drainage and water pollution.

The otters look for food in the beaver-maintained pond, diving into the murky water and coming up covered in mud. This requires vigorous grooming, which they do sitting on the lodge. On the day I saw them, three were busy with this task. One pair helped each other.

A third otter was busy cleaning him/herself without help. It was interesting to see how the sleek muddy fur was licked clean.

S/he also used the lodge higher up as a toilet area. Geese have had a nest atop the lodge so it has proved useful as a multi-functional structure.

Otters are perhaps more popular than groundhogs, muskrats and beavers because they can be playful and people enjoy watching them. The restoration of otters throughout NC also benefited the state in another way – river otters captured in the Eastern part of NC were donated to the state of West Virginia and NC received wild turkeys in return, leading to restoration of a population of these wild birds in the state.

My biggest treat lately has been watching Atlantic bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) off the NC coast. They swim close enough to shore that you can at least see their flippers emerge from the water. While other birders on our trip were intent on identifying avian species such as gannets, gulls, pelicans, etc. I was busy photographing two pods of dolphins that were swimming by.

These intelligent animals form groups of about 10-25 individuals; I saw about 5-10 swimming near one another. That was exciting; many years ago, I had gone on a boat trip with my nephew to see dolphins, but we failed to see any on that trip.

I discovered that there are certain dolphin families that inhabit the waters of NC’s Outer Banks: Onion and his family summer around Nags Head and winter around Beaufort. Since we were at Nags Head in the winter, the dolphins I saw may have been a different family.

A few animals that I’d hoped to see on my trip to the Outer Banks in January were the black bear, coyote and red wolf. The man who organizes the annual black bear festival in Plymouth told me that it was unlikely we would see bears since the mothers would be in their dens and other bears would also not come out much with the sudden fall in temperature we had that weekend. He was right and we also didn’t see coyotes or wolves. I did discover some scat, indicating some mammal had been on the road. Perhaps I’ll be lucky and see one of the resident coyotes at the nature reserve where I volunteer soon; one can always hope!