Otter back in the water on west side of E.E. Wilson Wildlife Area

[Joel Geier]

This morning on my way back home from a bird survey, I stopped along Highway 99W south of Coffin Butte Road to scan "Laguna del Ray."  I soon spotted a RIVER OTTER diving, rolling and generally frolicking in the water.  No doubt explains the curious visitor to our front yard yesterday.

Laguna del Ray is my name for the pond on E.E. Wilson Wildlife Area which is visible from the highway near Milepost 74, out on a prairie restoration area that Ray Fiori helped to initiate during his tenure as wildlife-area manager, a decade or so back.

To reach our yard from this pond, an otter would only need to romp about 150 yards up the ditch/stream that feeds this pond from the west, go through a culvert under the highway, and then follow the roadside ditch a couple hundred yards up hill to the south.

The east shoulder of the highway near Milepost 74 could be a good spot to pull over and watch the otter(s) from a distance without disturbance, as long as they continue to use this pond. There's a fairly wide area to pull over out of traffic, where the highway was torn up and rebuilt following a fuel tanker spill a few years back.

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Joel Geier

Tampico neighborhood north of Corvallis