| A surprising wildlife encounter River otters at Muir Woods October 12, 2010 |
| I've been to Muir Woods National Monument about a half-dozen times. Being the closest trove of redwoods to San Francisco, it's usually quite crowded with people. I took my husband Todd there on Columbus Day - we were on vacation for a week and visiting my sister and brother-in-law. It was a very busy day for the small park and it took us a long time to find a parking spot. I was honestly about ready to give up after we circled the two parking lots and searched for parking along the street several times. But it's such a nice pretty spot and the weather was so perfect so we persisted and eventually snagged a spot, and then took proceeded to take a stroll through the redwoods.
Fortunately once you're in the canyon about a 1/4 mile up from the visitor center and gift shop people do get spread out and it wasn't too bad. But this is certainly not a place I would go expecting to see wildlife. The tall trees are the attraction here. The walking is easy as the canyon bottom is flat, the trails are paved, and there are also a series of bridges that cross the small creek. We were near the second bridge when I heard something splash in the water. Todd and I strained our eyes trying to figure out what it was. He first thought it was a fish, as we had just learned that salmon do spawn in the creek. But then I saw it crawl out of the water. "Beaver?" he said. No, can't be. "Otter?" The creature disappeared upstream so we ran on the pathway beside the stream and ran into a group of folks and a ranger with their eyes fixed to the creature moving in the creek. Yep, river otter, or rather otters, a trio, mother and two babies. They were moving steadily up stream. We ran ahead several times and found a clearing and watched them, sort of like otter paparazzi. I, like several others, got my camera ready and started snapping shots but unfortunately the light is so dim beneath the redwoods and the otters were moving so quickly that my first few photos just show blurrs. Oh, well, I thought, it is cool to see them nonetheless! At one point when we had ran ahead we saw that the stream split into two branches. We stayed at one split while the ranger and a few others went up to the other branch of the creek. So we had a 50/50 chance of seeing them again. As luck would have it the otters took our branch. As soon as we saw them I kneeled down on the small bridge and balanced my forearms on its side, improvising a tripod, hoping to get a clearer shot. The otters moved closer, momma ahead of the two young otters. When they saw us they inched closer and then as they got really close momma made a few clicking noises, and the two young otters froze behind her. She also paused and carefully looked at the us standing still on the bridge. It was only then that I was able to get a good shot of the trio. After about 10 seconds she made a few noises that seemed to mean, "All's clear, they mean no harm," and the three otters quickly scurried under the bridge and disappeared from our view. It was an amazing sight :) I was so lucky to get at least a couple of still photos of the otters! I showed them to the ranger later on and she gave me her email so I could share them with her. She said they didn't have any good photos of the otters to show to visitors. Link to my other otter photos on Flickr Back to Fall Vacation 2010 Back to Tarol's Homepage |
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