Nature's Solace
Celebrating Nature in the Pacific Northwest
North American River Otter - Lontra canadensis
Curious river otters off shore at North Beach in Pt. Townsend. River otters seem to be regular members of this port community. As their name implies, they are creatures of fresh water habitats. However, they're equally at home in salt water estuaries and shorelines. The images on this page - taken on the Elwha river and the Strait of Juan de Fuca - portray their habitat flexibility.
I'm often treated with some surprise and a special sighting on my walks at the mouth of the Elwha river. Most of my sightings are aviary like a chickadee gathering her nesting material, or a merganser couple with their brood of twelve chicks. But one day I was scanning the opposite bank and caught some movement rise out of the river. A family of four river otters!
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After climbing onto the bank, they proceeded to groom and play, obviously enjoying each other's company. River otters wash themselves after each meal. Perhaps this prompted their grooming break. While I mostly think of river otters as being in the river, as their name implies, I've read that they spent 2/3 of their life on land and can run 15 miles per hour. However, in the water they can diver 60' and hold their breath for up to 8 minutes. Swimming speed can reach 7 miles per hour.[1]
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River otters only live on the North American continent. Seeing the otters was a good sign for the Elwha river ecosystem, as the otter's presence is a sign of good water quality. When pollutants enter their watershed habitat, river otters are the first to show signs of the existence of contaminants. Their food sources are sensitive to environmental degradation from climate change and pollution.[2]
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What I was watching on this day was likely a family group consisting of mom and her pups from her previous litter. Males may be solitary or they may form a group of two to seventeen individuals. The males are polygamous, leaving the females to raise the young who stay with her for a year. Occasionally the family will include an adult female "helper".
The average litter size is 1 - 3 pups born between March and May in a den near the water. These dens may have multiple entrances underwater as well as on dry land. The pups will learn to swim at two months of age. Their playful antics like snow and mud sliding, tail chasing, games of tag and water play helps to strengthen their social bonds and help them develop important skills. The pup will become mature at 2 to 3 years old and on the average, will live to be 8-9 years old in the
wild.[3] Playtime for the river otter may also be just plain fun!
Where do river otters live? - Distribution map
Grooming Break - River otters clean themselves after eating
Up Close with the Otters!
-A friend of mine, Micheal McCurdy, is a daily swimmer in the cold waters of Pt. Townsend, sometime in the company of the otters.
Here are a couple of excerpts from his journal:
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"I discovered a den for a family of six otters on one of my beaches and they sometimes frolic in the water near me, or cavort in the sand as if it were warm while I'm freezing my butt off. It is amusing and exhilarating to be intimately close to nature. However, I confess that when I'm swimming, it does feel rather creepy when these guys follow alongside me and then disappear for a minute. When they are floating and poke their whiskered faces up at me, they are rarely closer than 20 or 30 feet, rather cute or comical in their inquisitiveness, but when they disappear underwater they could be scrutinizing the lint in my belly button from inches away. I'm somewhat comfortable now with the otter."
"Wow - I saw the biggest gaggle of otter ever this morning after my swim!
SEVENTEEN otters crossing the sand. It was a veritable herd. Amongst them there were five very small otters.
A dog pursued them into the water and the otter seemed to lure the dog out deeper. Circling near the dog but just out of reach, they seemed to taunt him and draw him out into yet deeper water and then, in unison, they turned and very aggressively chased the dog out of the water. A couple minutes later while walking further down the beach, ten to twelve of their heads popped up in a tight cluster very close to shore (and to me) and they ALL had small fish in their mouths. It wasn't really an image of happy diners but rather a wicked feeding frenzy. I imagine that as a group they must have cornered a school in the eel grass or something, as I can't imagine that hunting is always that successful for them. A seagull dove at them relentlessly half a dozen times trying to steal some fish, but they violently defended themselves with the uproar of all those hisses and chirps that we've discovered the otter make. In fact, I got the feeling that the otter were taunting the seagull, trying to coax it to get closer. As cute, playful, frolicsome, and curious as these guys often seem, I was struck by how cunning and aggressive they seemed to be acting . . . Anyway, it was a real show!"
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