I finally got around to putting together the following river otter video from a short video clip that I captured last spring:

What reminded me of the video clip was a wonderful sequence of river otter pictures recently posted by a fellow member of the Fraser Valley Birding forum who is also a great photographer.

I also created the following YouTube version of the River Otter video.

The footage for the video was taken in Town Centre Park in Coquitlam, BC.  We’re not sure how the otter got into “Lafarge Lake” (the name for the glorified pond on the site of an old quarry) however we do have a pretty good idea why he liked it there. Except during the hottest months of the year, the pond is stocked with fish for anyone to come and try to catch. For the otter, it’s a free buffet in addition to all of the yummy things that occur naturally in the pond such as the crunchy morsel with claws that it is eating in the video.

River Otter in Lafarge Lake, Town-Centre Park, Coquitlam, April 2013. Copyright 2013, Kevin H Hood, all rights reserved.

The camera was hand-held during the recording and Adobe Premiere Elements Video Editor (version 11) was used to touch up the original footage and to publish it to YouTube.  The original sound-track was filtered to reduce background noise but was otherwise left untouched and consists of background (city) noise, a crow calling and, if you listen carefully, something that might be the sound of the otter crunching on its snack.

River Otter in Lafarge Lake, Town-Centre Park, Coquitlam, April 2013. Copyright 2013, Kevin H Hood, all rights reserved.