Two winters ago I was walking along The Evergreen State College beach on
the Sound, when I saw a female White Winged Scoter behaving in a manner
most erratic. She was submerging, resurfacing closer to shore flapping
and straining, and then submerging again. As the bird got closer, I
finally saw the head of the otter that had it by the neck. I sat down
to watch what happened. The otter was small- barely larger than the
duck, and carried the writhing scoter all the way in. Unfortunatly, I
had unwittingly chosen to sit directly in the otter's path. When the
otter had dragged it's prey to within an arms length from me, it
suddenly became alarmed, dropped the duck, and dove back into the water.
The scoter also dove, resurfacing 10m from shore and paddling slowly
away, obviously the worse for wear. The otter then decided to rant a
little, and did its best to growl at me from the water as I walked along
the beach for another 50m or so.

I'd say River Otters eat ducks.


Sea McKeon
The Evergreen State College
winged at hotmail.com


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