Tag Archives: otters

Move Along – Nothing To See Here

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Lots of times you’re in the heat of the action and you look up and there is something so different from what you are presently doing that you have to stop and just stare at it. Such was the case this September afternoon on the Madison river in Yellowstone National Park.

We had been shooting Otters as they swam back and forth in the river, hunting, catching big fat trout, there are many big fat trout in the Madison river, the young otters playing, bickering amongst themselves, making up, otters can’t stay mad for very long and generally just displaying all the behavior that makes otters, otters.

There are many animals in the park and usually everyone is focused on the big exciting ones. The grizzlies, wolves, bull elk fighting and they tend to lose sight of some of the more elusive, but equaling exciting species like the otters. And when you do see them it is normally just a glimpse as they flash by, barely giving you time to lift your camera for a grab shot. Which is why when you get to spend some quality time with them it is very special indeed.

But this day was different, the otters decided to stay around and hunt the area known as the log jam, a wide place in the river that catches all the logs and trees floating downstream and once one log is caught it catches another and so on until you have a large collection of logs and other debris stretching halfway across the river. Trout love log jams, there’s shade, plenty to eat, and places to hide when they need to. Otters love log jams for exactly the same reasons.

 Unbelievably we had the opportunity to stay with this family of otters for several hours, moving with them as they traveled up and down the river. Around noon they’d eaten enough, fooled around enough and it was time for a nap. They climbed in the middle of a particularly dense group of logs and became invisible once they were asleep. It was a cloudless day and the sun had been very hot making the noon-day light very contrasty, washing out the color of the water, even washing out the color of the dark reddish-brown of the otter’s fur. This made for poor shooting so looking for a shady spot to wait out our sleeping subjects we found a large pine to sit under and wait for their reemergence.

Whenever you set up your equipment, which consists of a large camera and telephoto lens on a big tripod you become a subject of interest for those passing by, an indicator that something important must be going on. “What do you see?” is the first question, then “What’s out there? I don’t see anything?”  or ” What a ya just sitting there for?” You try and answer their questions, explaining that there were otters here just a little while ago and they’re gone now but soon you get tired of answering the questions and dealing with their irritation that they missed something cool and somehow it’s your fault, and you begin giving short answers like “Nothing.” or “Scenery.” They hate that answer, the scenery one, because you have robbed them of seeing something really cool, like a wolf crossing the river, or an osprey in the act of catching a fish, and therefore have tricked them into stopping and wasted their time when you were only looking at scenery.

Sometimes, if you are a grumpy photographer and they are particularly obnoxious you reply with something like “Oh, you should have been here a few minutes ago. A mountain lion was crossing the river with a wolf pup in her mouth and an eagle swooped down and stole it from her. There was a hell of a fight.” We always throw “the hell of a fight” in there as that makes them really mad that they missed it. However if we’re feeling in a really peckish mood we often just say “Move along people. Nothing to see here.” this in a curt voice that doesn’t leave much room for other conversation.

In the mean time, while we have been feverishly shooting the otter family in this bad light, disgusted that we have to settle for what we know are going to be marginal shots that will be hell to deal with in Photoshop, yet ecstatic that we’ve had this time with these otters, you need a moment of decompression time to process all that you’ve seen. You need to find that shady spot and take in what else is going on around you. The spot we picked to wait for the otters just happened to be near a bend in the river where some large pines blocked the sun. The shadows and dappled sunshine produced this intense area of bright emerald light on the river’s surface in the midst’s of the deep shadows. The illumination of the trees reflected in the water produced a calming almost zen-like experience. It put everything back into perspective and perversely made us wish for the otters to take a little longer nap.

It wasn’t long before a new group of those visitors wanting to you to do their work for them by finding the next cool sight came up and the questions began again. The answer this time to “What do you see?” was “Nothing much, just some scenery.” It wasn’t long before we were alone again just watching the river.

Animal Portraits – Otters

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I was walking down memory lane this morning when I found myself along the Madison river in Yellowstone. It was way back in 2005 and I had been hoping to see some elk cross the river. Elk crossing the river is always good shooting. Bulls stopping to thrash their antlers in the water, throwing spray into the air, bellowing, cows bunching up to wait him out before they cross behind him. This was September so the rut was in full force and there was always lots of action.

But there weren’t any elk. They had moved out to greener pastures and the river was empty. I was just getting ready to pack up and find something else to shoot when I heard a high-pitched squealing coming from downstream. It was a young otter that had gotten separated from its family and was crying desperately to be found. It was racing frantically back and forth along the bank, shooting out into the river, climbing everything it could find and continually calling out for the others to come find it. This was the beginning of a very good afternoon.

Now otters in Yellowstone are not rare. But they’re one of those animals that you never see. Not unless you’re lucky. You can spend your entire time hunting for them, chasing down rumors, staking out places where they’ve been and never see one. Then you’ll talk to someone who had been picnicking at one of the picnic sites along the river and they’re all “Oh yeah we saw them. They were fishing right in front of us. One of them caught this great big trout. It was really neat. There was like four of them.  You should have been here. ” Serendipity plays a very big part in Otter spotting.

Now any place along the river is prime otter territory but there are some places more prime than others. I just happened to be unknowingly at one of them at just the right time. There is a spot on the Madison that is called the “Log Jam”. It’s just a little ways upstream past 7 mile bridge in a wide shallow bend in the river. It’s shallower there than the areas above and below and consequently a perfect place for the logs and branches floating downstream to snag and pile up forming the log jam.

This is the otter equivalent of Disneyworld. They go absolutely gonzo nuts in a place like that. First off every part of the Log Jam in an E ticket ride, they crawl up on it, they dive off of it, they wrestle and toss each other into the river. They take naps on the larger logs that are warm from the sun, hang out, talk about their day, fight, play snuggle, goof off, and generally just be otters, plus there’s food all over the place. Trout are always under and around the logs and so are the otters, because the only thing they like better than playing and sleeping is eating.

The otter family wasn’t lost. They were just upstream of the log jam and the youngster was on the downstream side. After Mom heard the little one wailing she gave a few sharp barks and soon they were all reunited again. Thus began one of the most perfect afternoons in the entire history of Yellowstone, Photography, Otter watching and sublime happiness, ever. As if deciding to give this photographer a gift they spent the next several hours swimming back and forth between that Log Jam and the confluence of the Madison and Gibbon and Firehole rivers at the eastern end of the Madison valley. Maybe a distance of 5 or 6 miles. We, the otters and I, plus about a dozen other photographers that joined in, walked back and forth along that stretch of river until I had filled every storage card I had with me with otter pictures and the otters decided it was time to go somewhere else. Without a sound they suddenly turned and swam downstream faster than we could run and they were gone. In the nearly 10 years since that afternoon that I’ve been going to Yellowstone I have never duplicated that experience again.

Fortunately I have these images to remind me of that incredible afternoon. It’s not the same but it’s pretty darn good.

We Are Family

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Here they are the starlets of the river world, or perhaps I should say the otterlets of the river world. These are the showstoppers, rivaling wolves, grizzlies, combative bulls, any attraction you want to put up against them. I hesitate to say this only because I don’t want to tarnish the good name of otters but they’re the Kardashians of the river ways. Beautiful, arrogant, aware of every lens pointed at them, they’re Yellowstone’s answer to Hollywood’s glamour.

When the Otters appear everything else stops. They command your attention from the moment of their arrival to when the last gleaming flash of their glistening bodies disappear down stream. They are probably one of the most photogenic animals you can see in the park and one of the most elusive. I have been to Yellowstone more times than I can remember and I have only been fortunate enough to encounter them for an extended period, three times over a dozen years. It’s not that they’re rare, because they’re certainly not, they’re just one of those animals that you have to luck onto. Some people walk into the park, trip over an otter and say “Oh look at that” and head for the shops at Old Faithful. Others have never seen them in all their visits.

On this particular shoot I was following along the Madison river when I noticed a photographer friend I hadn’t seen in a couple of years standing near the river looking upstream. I stopped and talked to him and he told me that otters had been seen at 7 mile bridge and he thought they might show up again. No sooner had he said that when we heard their cries upriver as they talked to each other and traveled downstream towards us. I was lucky enough to have the correct lens on my camera as they came into view, playing, chasing each other, diving for fish, cavorting like kids just out of school. Above 7 mile bridge is an area we call the log jam for obvious reasons and if there are any otters around that’s where you’ll find them. That’s where this shot was taken and several hundred more in fact as they spent the better part of an hour swimming through the snags, climbing over them, resting, and generally showing us what otters do for a living.

When I stopped to talk to my friend I had only intended to be there a few moments so I had neglected to turn off my truck. However when you encounter an opportunity to spend quality time with the Kardashians, I mean otters you can not lose focus for a second. These are pictures that you’ll never be able to get again so it’s now or never. The cardinal rule for wildlife photographers is “Shoot it when you see it”, and that’s what we did. As the otters moved downstream we followed, shooting as we went until we had traveled a good mile or more from the initial meeting. When I had time to think I wondered if I would have a truck, not to mention all the rest of my gear when I got back, but in for a penny in for a pound.

Finally the otters had had enough of us and decided to ditch these otterarazzi’s and so they did, leaving us to trudge back to our starting point, two grown men giddy as school girls over the incredible experience we’d just had, carrying our gear, me wondering how I was going to explain to the insurance company that someone had stolen my truck with all my gear in it just because I left it unlocked and running, and it wasn’t my fault because there were these otters, see…. and my friend making comments like “Why didn’t you shut it off when you got out?” and “I always shut mine off”, etc. until I had visions of making him otter bait but I shouldn’t have worried, this was Yellowstone.

When we got back there it was just like I left it, still running but nearly out of gas, everything in place, and thanking the powers that be for not punishing me for the ecological catastrophe I had caused by allowing all the those hydrocarbons to escape, I stowed my gear. I did shut off my truck then because I needed a moment to settle down and reflect on what had just happened. I had just spent over two hours doing what I love most in the world and I had three, count ’em three, compact flash cards filled with otter pictures. My truck didn’t get stolen, my gear was safe, the EPA didn’t have a warrant working for my arrest, it had been a glorious day. To this day that experience remains at the very top of my Yellowstone memories. It is one of those times that can never be recreated.

Even though I have shot otters since then it was never the same, the time was too short, the light was wrong, they were too far off, there was always something to mar the opportunity, but not that day. That day was perfect.

Ring of Bright Otters

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They’re not rare, they’re not even uncommon, but they are elusive. There are people who have been going to Yellowstone for years that have never seen them and then there are those first timers who casually say , “Oh yeah we’ve seen them every day this week, want to see a picture”. It just goes to show you that life is unfair and it’s often unkind. Otters is what we’re talking about. Otters here, otters there, Otters everywhere, just not where you are when you want to take their picture. I was one of the fortunate because I was lucky enough to find them floating and fishing their way down the Madison river one afternoon and they stayed in a stretch of the river known as the log jam near seven mile bridge for several hours. That’s where I got hooked. From that point on Otters have been one of the big three for me whenever I’m in the park. This particular bunch happened to be up at the north end of Lake Yellowstone in Pelican creek near Indian pond and were headed back out into the lake. There were several den holes in the bank along the creek and they had been resting in one getting ready for as much chaos and mayhem as they could pack into the rest of the day. As you no doubt know each otter contains all the energy in eleven five-year olds who have been fed all the sugar they could gag down and then compressed into a long sleek supple body created solely for mischief. Fun to watch but don’t get involved.