Since I went back to the start of my current Lightroom catalogue after thinking about our large number of Wood Stork images another set came to mind. Shooting around the Lowcountry means having way more photographs than you can possibly publish. And really, how many of us will actually delete everything we didn’t publish.

This is a case in point.

Ellen and I were standing on the side of a back road looking over a marsh that we know has always been a busy spot. The ACE Basin has plenty of these.

Suddenly there was huge splash, water flying, right next to me. Happens often, it’s an Alligator we scared. But not this time.

A big adult River Otter did a long jump into the marsh canal and was making a run for the road, and the marshes on the other side. Most roads here run between the marshes so it was easy to turn and focus in the general direction.

Best viewed large.

He hit the road and trotted over to the Palms and reeds lining the roadside marsh.

Needless to say we just held the button down, and that’s why we have so many photographs to choose from.

The whole thing was over in seconds, but we laughed a lot longer than that.

‘The North American river otter has long and thin whiskers that are used to detect prey in dark waters. An average adult male weighs about 11.3 kilograms (25 lb) against the female’s average of 8.3 kg (18 lb). Its body length ranges from 66 to 107 cm (26–42 in). About one-third of the animal’s total length consists of a long, tapered tail. Large males can exceed a weight of 15 kg (33 lb)’ (Wikipedia)

Specs; OM-1 mk2, OM 100-400 ll, Lightroom.