Grizzly Island

[dailyanimals]

This last Sunday I went to look for otters at the Grizzly Island Wildlife Area.

Grizzly Island is managed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. In years past you used to be able to pay the entry fee at the entrance to the area, but now they have "economized" (I guess), and you are required to buy a pass in advance. The most convenient place for me to buy a pass is at our local Walmart. The CDFW Lands Pass comes out of the same system as the fishing and hunting licenses, so is handled by the Walmart sporting goods department, but good luck finding a Walmart employee who knows where to find it. Fishing and hunting licenses they know all about, but if you want to go to a Wildlife Area and not kill anything, well, apparently nobody does that.

For future reference: eventually we did find the Lands Pass listed under "Misc" in their system. Fortunately there is an annual pass available so I only have to do this once a year.

And I did find an otter, so it was all good.

Three photos of the otter's nose. Because you can never have too much otter nose.

Also, in the "interesting things that are not otters" category, there was a pair of turtles having a disagreement over which of them was going to get the prime sunning spot on their tiny reed island.

And a bird which I haven't been able to identify hunting insects over the water.

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