J Scott Shannon

Arriving at the pier last night with out-of-town company, I was surprised to find unequivocal sign right away that at least one otter had visited the dock that very day. There were two very fresh fish scraps – and only two – on top of one of the pontoon floats under the dock. Only an otter could have put them there, and not just any otter, but one that was familiar with the pier structure. I was very excited! One of the natives had obviously returned!

So for the first time this summer, I went into active otter-spotting mode. Scanning the headland, I noticed a new path in the brush at the main den site that was just as wide as an otter's body, and saw signs that a second den entrance had been used recently, too. Then, about twenty minutes later, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and to my amazed delight, I saw not one but five otters walking down the crag of the main den towards the water: three adult-sized individuals, and two pups-of-the-year. (It was the largest assemblage of otters I've seen here in six years.)

It was after sunset already, so I had to rely on behaviors alone to figure out who I was looking at. To make a long story short, after witnessing all the various interactions, I believe the group was comprised of Mother, Pup (now a yearling, and evidently a female – yay!), a new male and female pup, and Slick! (I'm now convinced more than ever that he is the father of all of the youngsters.) I don't know where they've been for the last 8-1/2 months, but obviously, they're all alive and well and doing fine!

With such a long absence, I know I still don't have a study anymore, but at least it has a happier ending now than it did before, and my otter-starved soul is whole once again. :-)

 

I saw Slick and Nova at dusk yesterday. It was too dark to see facial characteristics, but I could tell who it was anyway. I ID'ed Slick by his sharp white lower canines, and I suspected the companion was Nova by the way it followed Slick everywhere, like a pup following a mom. I wasn't certain about that ID, though, until after the two briefly got separated, and the one otter started to chirp. Chirping! Adult males don't generally chirp when they get separated; I mean they do sometimes, but Chirper and Slick don't. The fact is, until Nova came along, I haven't heard the sound of otter chirping at all since Scout died, back in 2004. That sweet birdlike note was music to my ears, I'll tell you. I'd almost come to the conclusion that I'd never hear that sound again.

And Slick, hearing Nova's chirps, sought out his lost companion, and they resumed working the tidepools together. They make such a sweet, almost maternal couple. If Nova is as old as I think she is, though, she will be coming into her first estrus within the next fortnight. If she doesn't, then I'll know she is actually an orphaned pup, not yet one year old. I almost hope it's the latter, because after she attains physiological adulthood, her relationship with the males will probably never again be this close and friendly...

 

In my last posting, Oliver followed up with a comment speculating that "Probably, I hope, they have more female cousins up and down the coast, carrying on the same mitochondria as Old Mama." There's actually a fair possibility that's true. There was one–and only one–female from my study population over the last 20 years who I knew had dispersed and survived to adulthood.

Meet "One-Eye":




One-Eye was one of three females born to Old Mama in 1990, and the only survivor of that litter. When she became a yearling, her elder sister, Mama Junior, expelled her from the family territory. I don't know exactly where One-Eye went, but every once in a while in 1991 and 1992, the Trinidad family would go away for a few days, and while they were gone, One-Eye would suddenly show up here again. I speculated that the family must have travelled to wherever it was One-Eye was living in exile, so she had to come back here to escape from Junior.

The screenshot above was taken the very last time I saw One-Eye. She was then an adult of breeding age. Females finally understand the concept of territory at age 2, so it's no wonder I never saw One-Eye again. From then on, she would stand her ground against any female interloper. Then, starting in the mid-90s, some new males joined the Trinidad population, and interestingly, at least some of them had "the family resemblance," and I thought maybe, just maybe, they were either sons or grandsons of One-Eye.

Unfortunately, I don't have any evidence of there being another family group now on this stretch of coast. The last time a new male joined the local clan was 2 years ago, and the last stranger I noted in the area was a 1- to 2-year-old female I found dead on a nearby beach, also 2 years ago. She had the family resemblance, too. I felt very badly about that dead young female. By then, my own Little Mama had ceased her reproductive cycle, and Scoots: well, I never could count on her keeping her pups. Alive, that strange female at least presented some possibility that somewhere along the coast there might be another family group cranking out otter babies. But there's no evidence that is the case now. The closest known otter family now is at Patrick's Point, about 20 linear shoreline kilometers north of Trinidad - too far distant to be a source of new females for this stretch of coast in the near future.

(PS: One-Eye did, in fact, have two eyes. It's just that when she was a youngster, she injured the cornea of her left eye which turned a milky white for several weeks. That became her most identifiable feature, and instead of calling her "The pup with one white eye," I just called her "One-Eye" for short.)