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Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James
A female searches for prey in a river in western England. An otter’s eyes become more convex underwater, the better to see fish.
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Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James
In the Shetland Islands a mother and two male cubs listen intently to the clicking of the photographer’s camera. The nose of the cub at right had a recent encounter with a crab. Adults don’t live as pairs, and males play no part in raising the young.
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Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James
A big dog otter, just three feet below the surface and lit by rare Shetland sun, begins his dive for the hunting grounds 20 feet below. Otters are almost never deep divers and do not usually chase fish in open water. The energy demand of their hunting existence is so high that constant foraging for small fish in the kelp is more likely to deliver the goods.
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Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James
A large otter takes its own picture. When the otter snagged the bait, part of a rainbow trout, it fired a switch (kept dry in a condom) that worked the shutter of an underwater camera.
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Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James
Nostrils flaring, a young male surfaces after a dive for bullheads in the reedy shallows. Elusiveness and secrecy are the otter’s signature, a half-hidden existence usually only glimpsed by people they live among.
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Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James
Cubs play-fight as their mother dries off in a weedy nook in the Shetlands. With no blubber, otters must clean and dry their fur between dives to keep its insulating properties. In their second year, otters go their separate ways.
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Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James
A young otter surfaces with a shore crab in the Shetlands. It takes otters up to 18 months to become good at catching fish, so the young often go for crabs, which are easy prey.
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Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James
Two brothers, about 8 months old, scrap in the shallows. Mock fights can last 45 minutes, with no damage done.
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Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James
A mother swims above the ochre world of the Shetland kelp beds, checking out photographer Charlie Hamilton James. A bright air bubble, escaping from her fur, streams past her head, and she leaves a champagne trail of other bubbles in her wake. To find an otter in the water, look for the bubbles.
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Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James
Fish in mouth, a young otter rises from kelp beds in the Shetlands. Using his forefeet to move stones, he’s been snacking on sea scorpions, butterfish, rockling, and eelpouts.
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Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James
Otters have powerful webbed feet and a body shaped for agility underwater, but none of it would be any use without their exceptionally warm, dense fur. Once threatened with extinction, they are now back as the glamour kings of England’s rivers.
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Photograph by Charlie Hamilton James
An otter in a Dorset stream pops up from a dive and swims off from her surfacing ripple.
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Photograph by Hector Skevington-Postles
Experimenting in the river by his house in the English West Country, Hamilton James took four years to perfect his apparently jury-rigged system for capturing images of otters in midstream.
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