Otter: Strange behaviour

Ricky91t

While walking the dog this morning I noticed the 'local' heron out looking for his breakfast.

I then noticed some splashing in front of him, first I though it was a small fish jumping but then it looked more like a big fish trying to get on the rocks, the heron was backing away though.

Then a head pops out of the splashing and it's otter, it spent the next few minutes in the water 2-3 foot from the heron, it then climbed up on the rocks near it, at which point the heron backed away.

The otter got back In the water and continued what I can only say was annoying the heron by swimming around in front of it and splashing loads. After a while the otter headed down stream.

First of all I was delighted to see an otter, it's my first in that part of the river, I saw another one upstream a few years ago, but secondly what was it doing?

Pie Man

Maybe it was just getting rid of the competition.

Birdnuts

Saw a huge dog otter kill a Shag just offshore on my place in the west. I remember recounting the full story to Eamonn de Buitlear when I met him at a conference a few years back. He seemed well impressed and said he would have seriously loved to have got some footage of such an incident. Made me feel pretty good!!:cool:

Half-cocked

It is possible that the otter was trying to make the heron regurgitate fish which it could then scavange itself. A few weeks back a friends dog made a juvenile heron regurgitate a large trout before taking off. Maybe the otter has copped on that herons sometimes lighten the load for take off when they are being harassed?