The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge.
We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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April 28, 2020
Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest
Last summer one of the River Otters who live around here came up onto the beach for a good roll in the sand, and I noticed his right eye wasn’t functional (The Daily Bucket - sandbathing otter). It didn’t seem to slow him down at all. He was sleek and hefty, and his teeth were in good shape as best I could tell. Obviously he’d run into some trouble, but was managing. I saw him intermittently through the fall — his eye never got better — and then didn’t cross paths with him for months. I feared the worst.
Happily, there he was yesterday afternoon, fishing steadily in the shallow water just off the beach. He saw me clearly where I was standing 30 feet away and kept an eye on me throughout.
His left eye has to do double duty, and when he’s examining something, he angles his head toward it with that side preferentially, like this:
After it was clear I was harmless, making no move to go into the water or attack, he continued fishing. He’d dive, be down about a minute, then surface with a fish, which he’d gulp down, chewing as necessary.
His set of teeth is formidable. Mr Otter snags fish underwater with his front teeth, then chomps it into submission with his molars. Small fish or crabs can be swallowed in a trice, larger ones need some work to get down little by little. If a fish or crab is just too big to eat while floating like this, he will haul it out onto a rock or the beach.
Mostly on this occasion he was eating gunnels, a long flat bottom fish. There are several kinds of gunnels in the Salish Sea. A few of my pictures show a greenish/brown color, which suggests he was eating a number of Penpoint Gunnels, possibly also Rockweed gunnels, a brighter green but much smaller. Penpoint gunnels can grow as big as 18 inches (46 cm) long, although they are mostly shorter.
I stood there on the beach for 20 minutes or so, admiring him. Besides taking pictures, I spoke to him in the wee language. He wasn’t put off by my presence at all, and obviously this was a rich site for fishing so it was all good.
I took some video. He dives as a late loon calls across the bay (loons have been heading back to Canada lately for the breeding season). When he surfaces, he’s wrangling a gigantic gunnel. Took him a while to dispatch it, but he’s obviously very skilled.
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It is truly impressive that he’s able to hunt moving prey in three dimensions in dark water — without binocular vision. No depth perception. But his survival depends on it.
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Cloudy unsettled weather and warming up here in the Pacific Northwest.
What’s up in nature in your area today?
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