Tag: writing

How otters date?

[I’ve been watching my otters as usual, and I am fairly sure I have been peeping in on how they meet up and find a match. Many of these photos are from a long way off, but they nonetheless tell a story that I hope you will find convincing.]

Most of the winter, if I see otters together I assume they are a mother and last year’s young. They behave like puppies, rolling around, diving in, and playing, often fishing out of the same hole in the ice.

Recently their behavior has changed. I haven’t seen two otters together in a while, and when there are two they occupy separate holes and keep their distance.

A few minutes earlier, there had been only one, using the righthand hole, emerging and walking/sliding a short way off to poop. Then he dived and came up in the lefthand hole, where he stayed. Suddenly, a second otter appeared in the right hand hole. He came out and looked towards the other otter with interest.

Then he went over to where the first otter had pooped and rolled, and had a good sniff:

and a roll:

Both otters then continued to fish from their separate holes for a while. This was slightly untypical behavior, but I didn’t think much of it, till today.

At the far end of the pond, on a warm and very gloomy day, were two otters together. One went off to poop by a large rock, and on its return the other one went off to the same place and used the exact same spot. Nothing very unusual about that.

But when they got back together, things got interesting.

One of them spent some time smelling the other one’s head and neck closely:

At one point the right-hand one seemed to bite the neck of the other one, who wasn’t too pleased, but didn’t move away (no photo!). Then the left-hand one rolled over:

and cosied right up:

A little later, they put their heads together:

Time for a nap:

I am not sure I am interpreting all this right, and I will never know, because I had to leave, and now I am away for several weeks. It is the mating season for otters, so I could be right. Males do bite females’ necks during courtship, and rolling around is typical too (but they roll all the time anyway!) One slight doubt: females are about 20% smaller than males but these two don’t seem to have much size difference?

By the time I get back the ice will almost certainly have melted, and any courtship will have long since been consummated, so I end with a link to the only video I could find of river otters mating. It is very, very long, but around six minutes in you can see a commotion in the water, where clearly something is going on, and then they emerge from the water onto land, already conjoined, and making charming chirping sounds. From then on they stay on land, so you can watch and listen for a while if you want.

I have read that they mate in the water only, but other sources say it can be in the water or on land, and this video confirms that!

Coyote spring fever (updated)

[The earlier version of this failed to show the video; I am hoping I’ve fixed the problem).

February is when coyotes mate, and two nights ago they held a party next to my driveway. Neither me nor our beagle saw or even heard a thing, but they didn’t clear up when they left, and so the signs were clear to see.

They came out of the woods, six or eight of them:

Some of them came towards the old stone wall by the driveway:

Others headed towards the vegetable garden at the top of the photo:

where they ran around in excitement:

Then they moved a little closer to the house and seem to have stopped for a while in a group hug:

Nearer the woods there was another gathering spot:

And then they left, some went back the way they came, and some loped off across the driveway and down the hill.

I have no idea what was going on. Usually a group is an adult pair and their young, aged one or two years, for a total of at most six coyotes, but this looked like more to me. Each gathering ‘hub’ had one urine mark, which suggests territorial marking. No scat anywhere, no kills, no signs of a female in oestrus. Mating does take place at this time of year, but it usually involves just the loving couple, not a rave.

Come spring, they will be taking solitary walks through the woods, fording the streams , and looking for prey:

Very occasionally one emerges from the woods at dusk in full view when I have my camera handy. This was in August, after the field had been mowed, perhaps stirring up small prey animals.

PS Coyotes in the northeastern USA are sometimes called coywolves. They’re a hybrid of a coyote and a wolf, and much larger than the coyotes of the western USA.

Photo credit: Justin Lee Hirten from The Canadian Field-Naturalist, from the website of Jonathan Way,

Coywolves: The Coyote-Wolf Hybrids That Thrive in Northeastern North America