More on the Pringle Bay otters.

In July last year, I posted one of Liam Cornell’s photos of an otter in Pringle Bay. Having sighted one again at the end of last year, Liam wrote to me with the following story and photos:

“I had the strangest experience with an otter at Pringle Bay at the end of last year. I walked out onto the rocks to photograph a family of Egyptian geese swimming in the sea, when I heard a splash, and right next to me in the water was an otter. He disappeared under the water before I could take a photo and I thought: ‘well, at least I got to see him’. To my surprise he came up again and for the next half hour he swam around me snorting loudly and almost mock charging me. I could not work out if he was curious or really irritated about something. Whether I was in the way of food, or there were pups around. There were lots of fishermen on the rocks the day before and I wondered if they had maybe been feeding him scraps. At times he came right up to me (maybe a meter away). Eventually I left him as I did not want to aggravate him too much.”

Thank you for the great photos! Very interesting behaviour indeed. As it is the time of year for pups, the otter may have been trying to divert attention from them, but this is rather unusual behaviour.