No doubt you are right D. Having to add that long $1.49 word was probably too much for us simple folk.
Some time ago, there was a mother black bear and two cubs that got treed about 20' from where I was cutting firewood. I didn't even see them go up the tree, but sure did hear an awful lot of crashing when they were going through the underbrush. Took these from the top deck of the house, as the bears were about 20' up the tree. Sorry about the awful focus, I think I must have had the autofocus turned off.
Well, to be honest, both my friend and myself had our chainsaws going and that may have convinced mama bear to send the cubs scurrying up the tree. We watched them for about 15 minutes from the deck until they came back to earth as it were, and didn't realize until they were back on terra firms that there were three bears there. An interesting episode for sure.
Not the best photo, but these guys are river otters, as opposed to the smaller sea otter. Yes, they are in the ocean, about 10' below where I was standing at the edge of the bank. Often difficult to get a picture of these guys as they move quite quickly. I think there were 7 or 8 of them when I took this, but most of them had taken a dive.
In all the years of my work, out all night alongside rivers and woodlands, I have never seen an Otter in the wild. They are so elusive. My wife did on an early morning walk along our river a few years back. (Itchen) at Otterbourne. But I missed it as I was looking elsewhere. So your photos are understandable Keith when you say not the best, as you can blink and miss them. But well done for capturing them.
Elusive they are indeed. I rarely ever saw them when there was a number of people around, or visiting boats in the bay. For much of the year, Ruxton only had 4 full time residents. That's when we would see them. Some of the river otters are huge, of such a size that you would hardly believe it. Somewhere I have a few more photos of them, and when I run across them I will post here.
The first painted turtle that I noticed this year to come out of the stream to lay eggs. She was very shy but I didn’t disturb her for too long. They are very beautiful.
I must have at least three dozen photos of this pileated woodpecker, and all but a small handful show his head as a blur.
Two for the price of one. You'll spot the big bee right away, but don't overlook the smaller bee, which I think is one of about 150 varieties of Mason bees.
These are for D. About the only time you can see how many otters there are in their little band, is when they are all swimming in the same direction, seemingly with a purpose. Once they get to where they want to be, it's playtime. In this instance, I just happened to be over at the edge of the bank when I spotted the otters. I think there were about eight of them. Once they got right in front of our place they started with their shenanigans and about all I could see at one time after that was maybe three or four. At this point, something spooked them and all I got was a splash in this photo. A few seconds later they were all headed back to where they came from.
