Spring 2023
Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest
I didn’t know what I was looking at on a late April day until I got a good look at the video. Seems unambiguous but I’ll let you judge for yourself. Without a camera it’s likely I’d have missed the whole thing. As it was, the action took place a quarter mile away and largely backlit since it was toward the south. I had the camera zoomed out to maximum with my arms propped on a railing for as much steadiness as I could manage. All of which is to say we’re not talking David Attenborough here haha, but you’re seeing what I saw!
What drew my attention when I arrived at the shore was a lot of splashing. At first I thought it was ducks bathing. But no — it was two River otters wrestling in the water. They were pulling out all the stops, full on tangling, rolling around, growling and whacking at each other. It went on for about 15 minutes and then they climbed out onto a seaweedy rock, and resumed the action.
Out of the water, what they were doing became more visible to me. They were mating. After a bit, one otter jumped back into the water (the male I think), and the remaining otter watched him go, keeping an especially careful view toward the beach (to the right from my vantage). The action throughout this whole episode was pretty intense but I didn’t get the impression either was being especially threatening or dominated.
Video #1:
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A few minutes later the male otter returned to the seaweedy rock and they got it on some more.
Video #2:
There’s surprisingly little that’s sciency on the internet about River otter mating behavior. Much of the information comes from observation of captive otters, and that’s not necessarily an accurate description of what otters do in the wild. A few facts that did emerge from science studies include:
Gestation in otters is only two months, so to maintain the spring linkage between birth and mating, her eggs do not implant in the uterine wall for 9-10 months. Female River otters are only in estrus for one month of the year.
Except for this window of mating season, male and female otters have nothing to do with each other, and in fact a mother otter will chase away a male who gets too close to her den. That is what appeared to be happening after these two mated. About a half an hour later, an otter emerged from the water and ran up the beach …. and then quickly retraced his route, chased right back into the bay by the second. He “porpoised” quickly away. The chaser, the new mom I assume, then returned to the beach and loped back into the woods, out of my sight.
Video #3:
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I’ve seen an otter in the vicinity of that spot more than once in the month since that day, coming and going from the bay, with a more unhurried pace. It could well be the mom otter out fishing and then returning to her kits. They won’t leave the den until they are two months old. After that, the youngsters will stay with mom until the next spring, learning how to be otters.
If we get very lucky, maybe I’ll see them this summer. If so, I’ll be sure to report on that in a future bucket.
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Sunny and a bit cooler than our seasonal average for late May in the Pacific Northwest islands.
What’s up in nature in your neighborhood?
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