Happy World Otter Day from Leeland Harbor!
Today is World Otter Day, held every year on the last Wednesday in May. The global event was created a decade ago by the International Otter Survival Fund to raise awareness about endangered otters across the world. The Michigan Wildlife Conservancy explains that Michigan otters are River otters that have a variety of specialized adaptations to help them live in watery environments:
These include webbed feet and a muscular tail to enable them to catch most fish, long whiskers to help locate prey in dark water, and dense brown fur and very high metabolism to stay warm in cold water. Otters are versatile eaters, and supplement their normal fish diet with frogs, crayfish, waterfowl, turtles, small rodents, and assorted other prey.
Otters are also much larger than mink. A big male can weigh 30 pounds and exceed four feet from its nose to the tip of its tail. Both sexes travel long distances along lakes and streams foraging for food, and they sometimes also make long overland trips between bodies of water. Otters are not good diggers, and usually rely on burrows made by other animals or natural hollows or beaver lodges for shelter.
Otters were originally found throughout Michigan, but by the 1920s they were scarce in the Northern Lower Peninsula and Upper Peninsula and probably gone from Southern Michigan. This led to a statewide ban on otter trapping from 1925 through 1939 that caused an excellent population rebound in the north. And limited taking after trapping resumed has helped maintain healthy otter populations there.
Spencer took this in Leland Harbor way back in 2009. See more including a couple more otter pics in his Leeland, MI gallery.
…and before you get all high and mighty about him misspelling the name, it’s way past time to admit that “Leland” should have been called “Leeland”. As Fishtown Preservation explains: “Lee Land” become a mighty fact in the thoughts and plans of sailors and ship and cargo owners. The Lee Land was well-known to them before 1850. “Lee – the quarter toward which the wind blows” – Leeland. Now LELAND.
