Pick of the Year 2023 - part three

Otters 

In this last post of 2023, I would like to share some of the most amazing moments I had all year, close up views of wild otters. I had several super encounters with these amazing animals in the west Highlands and Islands of Scotland. I watched them fishing for butterfish, crabs and plaice. What a menu. I watched them from clifftops, following their sleek twists and turns underwater. I watched them exploring rivers, popping in and out of their holts, families rolling about together and those shown here, a teenage cub that had only recently left its family. She was fishing, and I reckon it was a female by the small size. Then she pulled out to sleep on the seaweed. The second sequence is of a courting pair whom I watched cruising along the coast. I crept onto a tideline rock and watched them swim past a few metres away then pull out to groom on a rock twenty metres away. 

The cub was in as deep a sleep as ottters ever seem to go, they fidget a lot. It stretched and yawned, and after about half an hour it was awakened by a few herring Gulls that swooped low to check if it had left any food scraps about. It lifted its sleepy head then dawdled down to the water, scambled over the rocks towards me and slipped in right next to me.

The pair swam right next to one another, twisting and swapping places. Then when they pulled out of the water they shook themselves like dogs, from nose to tail, scattering water droplets in a great wide spray. They seemed to know where they were going and quickly curled up, groomed, fidgeted a bit, groomed and curled up again for brief sleep. They too left after about twenty minutes. And to top it all, there was a porpoise cruising past as they swam away. 

A very special experience.

Otters in the Western Isles

Luskentyre beach in South Harris, one of the finest beaches in the world, backed by rugged mountains and edged with weedy rocks which are rich feeding grounds for otters.

I recently spent a week on the islands either side of the sound of Harris. Golden Eagles and White-tailed Sea-eagles aplenty, and there were Red-throated Divers, Corncrake and other rare birds famously found in the islands. Although I like to see and hear the abundance of the more common species, Oystercatcher, Redshank and Snipe. And I spent hours watching otters. They are so adept at hunting, agile, quick, such well adapted animals, I could only sit back and admire them. The one in the photograph above is lying asleep on the seaweed in the background. They are so easiliy overlooked when lying quietly on land.

One clue to their presence can be the behaviour of the birds, like this Herring Gull that had spotted an otter eating a fish. They are probably easier to see from the air. The gull hung around from any scraps, but there were none.

Otters are not much easier to see when swimming at sea either. Look for a head, slimmer and more pointed than a seal's. Seals abound in these seas and every one has to be checked not to be an otter.

Another clue to spot an otter at sea is the flick of a tail. Like the one above, as the otter bobbed in the waves keeping in balance as it munched on a Butterfish.

This one was diving to hunt through the fronds of seaweed fringing the tide zone in a bay. It brought some items onshore to eat, others it persisted in eating while treading water. However, their forepaws are not adapted to gripping and Butterfish are incredibly slippery, hence their name.

But when you have strong jaws and very sharp teeth, you can do it.