Wildlife Tracking Video; River Otter

River Otter are a cool animals. Following their trails always leads to adventure and insight into otters adventurous nature.

In this video I follow an otter trail on the Bantam River in Litchfield CT as it slides its way along the ice to a snow buried beaver lodge. Hope you enjoy it.

 

Tracks and Scat. Up to my elbows in it and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Quabin Reservoir

A few friends, Deneen and I had a great day out in the woods and by the water recently.  It was cold, clear and the snow was pretty good for tracking, revealing some obvious stories and some quite challenging mysteries to us.

Grouse tracks in snow

I’ll start with the more obvious stories.  In several spots we saw Ruffed Grouse tracks,

Black-cappedChickadee Tracks

Black-capped Chickadee,

Coyote Tracks

big Eastern Coyote tracks,

Otter Tracks

and a lot of otter tracks and sign (tracks above, slide below with their proud discoverer).  More on the otters later.

Otter slide

Indian pipe skeletons

These Indian Pipe Skeletons (Monotropa uniflora or similar) when shook, dropped this very fine material (magnified below).  We never did figure out if the longer fibers are the seed or the larger black object is.  Only a few of those fell out and many of the fibers creating a fine dust in the hand.

Indian pipe seed

Ice on the water, hoarfrost

By the water we admired the ice and open water on the northern edge, warmed by the southern sun.  Sitting in the sun ourselves we snacked on the wild cranberries freed from the snow by this amazing micro-climate.  They had a very very strong flavor that puckered my mouth. Great thing to find in a frozen place.

Wild cranberry

Otter haul out and scatt

Back to the otters sign.  It was in abundance, tracks and scat in many places, particularly where there was open water, even just a little along the edge like the photo above.

Otter Tracks

The image above shows a nice example of the roundness of the toe pads.

Otter scat

The most intriguing mystery came in the contents of the otter scats.  One of which, pictured above contained these globs pictured magnified below (sorry no scale).  They were frozen so we could not determine their consistency.  Otter do secrete a yellowish white mucus-like substance for scent marking which could be what this is.  I have seen that before and it was not so chunky as this.

Otter scat contents

Otter scat

 

Crayfish scat contents

Even weirder, though with some help we were able to determine what the are, were these hard, somewhat hemispherical objects found in a different Otter scat.  There were several of them, some different sizes and we spent quite a while trying to figure it out, trading hypotheses from fish eyes, to a strangely adapted fish scale or seed shell and many other ideas.  It was fun and challenging and one of my favorite aspects of tracking.

Crayfish Gastrolith

Above and below are both sides of same object.

Crayfish Gastrolith

Turns out they are gastroliths, a deposit of calcium carbonate in crayfish that they build up in order to get a jump on growing a new exoskeleton once they molt.  Another tracker Connor O’Malley let us in on this secret.  Apparently they are common in Otter scat though I had not noticed them before.

Grey Fox Tracks

And a final tracking blessing, Grey Fox tracks; a rare treat.  Some of the group had never seen Grey Fox tracks before.  They only showed up in one spot where the snow was just right.  Round, symmetrical, small metatarsal and metacarpal pads (heel) and no nails showing, it ghosted in and out like they so often do.  I have had the great honor of spending a little time with a juvenile and it was friendly and gentle, always moving, darting about curiously.

Grey Fox Tracks

Our day was filled with other experiences too.  We listened to our echos on the lake, slid on the ice, rested in the sun, watched birds and talked to ravens.  On the way home we stopped to eat in the city, had to walk through a mall.  It was intense, nothing subtle, no delicate mystery, just bustle and noise.  At the restaurant the food was great the the company better.

Still, the best part of the day was standing huddled over a pile of shit wondering what was inside.

 

Tracking Peoples State Forest

Went out tracking today.  The snow was good, a layer of powder several inches deep on a layer of crust, then more loose snow.  Forgot my snowshoes so it was a bit of work to get around.  In the end I walked several miles. Here’s what I saw.  

Deer Trail

Trailed this deer and the others with it.  Not far from the road where I picked up the trail I found them but not before they found me.

Deer Bed in Snow

I spooked them out of there day beds and watched the last one leave.  It moved away slowly, stopping and looking back before bounding away.  I did not have the camera out so no picture.  It wouldnt have looked like much anyway.  The deer were bedded in the laurel on a flat bit of ground on a hillside.  As I approached I knew it could be a bedding area and even thought to crawl but felt that if I crawled over every rise I would never see anything.  Hard to be patient.

 

 

Peoples Forest

 

Beaver Brook Pond, sunny and beautiful.

 

 

Unknown Small Mammal Tracks in Snow

Little mammal tracks.  Some others showed a fairly short tail.  They are small enough to consider shrew or the smallest mice.  They were on the swamp ice.  I went through several times and retreated.

 

Mink Tracks

 

Upstream on Beaver Brook a Mink slide.  It was the only sign of Mink all day.

 

Peoples State Forest

 

 

Otter Tracks

 

On the way out found these older Otter slides.  They went on for a couple hundred yards.

River Otter Tracks

End of Otter Trail

 

Above is where they eventually went into Beaver Brook.  Below is as far as I went in the other direction, about 200 yards.  I ran out of steam and headed home.  The next body of water in that direction is the Farmington River more than half a mile away.

Otter Tracks on Snow