Thread by @phylogenomics

It was quite warm and sunny today around #DavisCA and alas I did not get out in the AM but managed to head out to #YoloBypass in the early PM. I went on a short walk to a spot I knew would be relatively shady. And along the way saw a few nice things like: 1/n

And then I got to this semi-shady spot with a little water hole and waited. And I was rewarded. First, with an otter swimming by. 2/n

And then what I think was a muskrat waddled by (not 100% sure about the ID). 3/n

And then some large birds flew overhead that I noticed via their shadows. Two were Swainson's hawks: 4/n

One was a raven 5/n

Then, well I head weird noises, like animals fighting. So I got out my phone and made a video mostly to record the house. - you can just barely hear it in this video 6/n

And then I saw some otters and it seemed like they were fighting. I made a video with my phone that has the noises. But I also tried to take pics with my good camera at the same time so the video, well, does not really show that much. 7/n

Here are some of the pics I got while I was also trying to film on phone - gif an otter emerging from the reeds where the noises were coming from - seems to have a cut on its face 8/n

And then another otter emerged, this one with some serious wounds 9/n

And then an otter climbed up on the grassy slope near me and rolled around for a bit and stared at me. Not sure if this was one of the wounded ones or not but it let me take a ton of pics from very close. 10/n

And some more 11/n

And some of my favorites, some of which I posted earlier 12/n

And that is when the fun really began. One otter showed up back in the water. 13/n

And then, well, another one showed up. And they got close. 14/n

And stayed close. For a while. While swimming around. 15/n

So I made another video with my phone since, well, they were making that same "fighting noise" I had heard earlier 16/n

So, yes, as suggested my @MelindaPerle - it is a fine line between love and war some times

https://twitter.com/MelindaPerle/status/1383984256817319940?s=20

So yes, I did get to see mating river otters today.

Unroll please @threadreaderapp