discussion / Camera Traps  / 21 August 2022

River Otter Camera Traps

Hello!

 

My name Is Britnee Cheney. I have started a new River Otter conservation program at the Aquarium I work at, and I'm having a hard time getting good clear videos of the otters from our camera traps. I know that I need to angle the camera up a little more. I have gotten some great footage of a lot of other animals, but for some reason my cameras are not going off before the otter has mostly left the view of the camera. I wondered if anyone has any experience with this and can help me set me cameras better/get better footage.

 

Thank you! 




Otters are a super video-genic target, but they can be challenging, as you say.  From a tech perspective, to get passing otters on the ground, finding a camera with a very fast trigger speed (< 0.5, ideally < 0.25 seconds) helps.  But otters have many more interesting behaviors than merely passing through.  The trick to getting these on camera is location, location.   My wife, Janet Pesaturo, has several blog posts on siting cameras for otterage, including link below on our blog.  Videos/Photos are from Massachusetts, which is rich with otter habitat.  But where you have them in Utah, this should help.  Janet is also very responsive to questions/comments/discussions on the blog page.  Good luck!

I am a Camera Trapper hobbyist. I have gotten some nice otter videos. You can see them on my you tube channel pheekin trail camera videos. There is nothing on the channel but 15 second videos of animals that I have filmed. I have several otter videos on the channel that I think are pretty good. I found a spot where beaver, mink, and otters were moving between a medium size river and a man made wetland. I set my cameras on the trails. The secret was getting the camera really low on the trees near the trails. If you look at the otter videos the camera is pointed toward the river, just offset of the trail. When placed at 90 degrees to the trail the otters moved too fast for a good video. When offset but looking toward the river, the otters see the camera but most animals still proceeded down the trail toward the wetland. It helped that the river bank was steep and when they got to the top they triggered the camera at the same time they saw the camera. The camera was a true dark flash so they see the camera has and object but do not see the flash. One warning when cameras are set low on a tree the camera really has to be locked in tight. Raccoon and coyote will investigate the camera and some will knock it.  Coyotes knocked out  of position three of the 4 cameras that I set. Thankfully I got the otters before they knocked the cameras. Hope this helps