I was surprised to see a river otter swimming in Fountaingrove Lake on January 24, 2022 at 8:15AM. The lake, more a city reservoir, as beautiful as it is for what it is, doesn’t seem a really robust, flowing, naturalistic water system given it’s placement in the middle of a golf course. I know it is fed from the east by Piner Creek which discharges to Santa Rosa Creek which in turn joins the Laguna de Santa Rosa.

But, it was really exciting given that I was just on a walk and not expecting to see one.

I managed to get two video snippets that don’t seem like much until the animal dives under the water and showing the hump of the back and the tail.

Some interesting information about otters in Sonoma County

From the Santa Rosa Press Democrat: River otters populations rebounding in Sonoma

The River Otter Ecology Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to the welfare of river otters and our watershed, is doing fantastic work studying and cataloguing the otter population in Northern California.