Otter and Moose Video....

I recently returned to Spencer Pond Camps for a five-day stay. I didn't take many photos or shoot much video on this trip. However, on my last evening, I ventured out for a paddle around the pond and was lucky enough to encounter a curious otter and a moose. The otter didn't stay around very long but I was able to get a few short clips of it checking me out. Below is a screen grab from the video. About twenty minutes later I came upon the moose. It was about 100 feet from shore and I could tell it was really bothered by the mosquitoes. In some of the clips, you can see how thick the mosquitoes were around it. You gotta feel bad for them, they don't have the ability to apply bug repellent as we do. Click here to check out the video: https://youtu.be/M5k9XMKTHqI

They're Back....

I went back to where I saw the otters last week and lo and behold they were back. They didn't hang around as long this time but I did manage to get a few photos before they left. After they left I saw them about a hundred yards up river but I didn't bother pursuing them because there was a nice sunrise coming up and I wanted to get some photographs of that; which I did and I'll be posting those later this week. You can see in the photos this otter has a fish which I'm pretty sure is a yellow perch because of the orange fins. It was 8 degrees that morning and its amazing how these otters can go into the cold water then into the cold air and not even be phased by it.

A First For Everything.....

I went out at sunrise yesterday because everything was heavily frosted so I figured I'd get some nice landscape photos. Instead I photographed these otters, it was a first for me, it's the first time I've ever seen wild otters in Maine and obviously they are the first photographs I've ever taken of an otter. There were three in all and in the first photo you can see two of them but when I got closer two of them went under the ice but one was kind of curious as you can see in the second photo, I thought he was going to walk right over and check me out, instead he went under the ice too. I was waiting for him to come back up when I heard a crunching sound behind me. The third photograph is what I saw when I turned around, it was crunching on the ice to make the hole bigger so it could check me out; I'd say it was less than ten feet away. It went under a few times and came back up and it seemed it wanted to come out of the hole but it wouldn't fit so it ended up disapearing and I'm sure it joined its two buddies and went up river. Before they left it was fun watching them slip under the ice and come back up with fish and have breakfast.