You are welcome to join me in this 9th of a series of articles taking a look back over my shoulder at some sightings that have not only delighted us but startled and surprised us.
In 2011, on the Western Isles of Scotland we were feeling adventurous. Instead of visiting another of our many favourite sites for birds, flowers and otters, we decided to seek out a totally fresh site for otters and headed south onto South Uist. Here we put on our trusty welly boots, me carrying my Zeiss 8x42 FLs, and began the trek to a remote east coast headland overlooking a narrow channel between the main island and an off-shore islet.
It was a hell of a trek, but the weather was glorious, and around us we could hear the calls of Curlews, and overhead the cackles of Red-throated Divers as they commuted between their tiny nesting lochans, and their foraging grounds. We reached the coast and gratefully collapsed onto a small eminence over-looking the channel. We had only been there about half an hour, when we spotted an otter swimming up the channel towards us. It was periodically submerging, and probably using the technique of flexing its entire body to propel itself, because when it re-surfaced we could see how much closer it was so it was swimming much faster than when simply using its feet.
There wasn’t time to stand up and look for cover to hide behind so we sat motionless and hoped that the otter would swim by without noticing us. How wrong can you be? It was almost alongside us, and only about 5 metres away when it spotted us just as it was about to submerge. Instead, it did a ‘double-take’, its head swivelling back from its diving position to allow it to look at us. We have never seen an otter so surprised. Amazingly it pressed on, but having swum perhaps another 3-4 metres it stopped dead in the water, and twisted around to look at us, before promptly resuming its course. And then it did the whole thing all over again: stopped, turned around, stared in amazement, swam-on.
This was one totally puzzled otter who could not believe its eyes, and so has become known to us ever since as ‘Disbelieving Otter’. It is quite possible it had never seen a human before and since we were sitting down and not presenting the classic ‘standing upright on two legs’ human posture, we did not elicit its instinctive fear of humans, just its curiosity. We would have loved to know what it was thinking.
Have you ever seen one of those scenes in a movie where someone digs his/her nails into a blackboard and drag them across it, creating a teeth-shattering screeching noise? In 2019 we watched a male otter (me looking through a pair of SF 8x42s) doing something that should have been creating a similar piercing racket.
We were on the Western Isles of Scotland on Benbecula at an east coast site, watching out for otters, divers (loons) and skuas, when a male otter came swimming into view and cruised up a nearby inlet. We expected him to swim out of sight, he seemed so concentrated and committed to making progress, but suddenly he turned ninety degrees and headed for the southern shore a few metres away.
We couldn’t believe he was headed to that shore because it was a sheer rock face with no visible holes or overhangs where he might have had a den. What on earth would he do when he got there? Well, he began climbing up the almost vertical rock face, clinging on with what seemed like a super-hero’s gravity-defying climbing ability, and by golly he reached about 2/3rds of the way up when physics finally overcame determination, and he came to a halt.
And then, after a few seconds it happened. Despite the muscles on all four of his legs bulging with the effort, and despite what must have been his entire compliment of claws clamped onto the rock surface, he began sliding slowly, ever so slowly, backwards down the rock slope. We couldn’t hear a ‘blackboard screech’ but it desperately looked as though there should have been one. He ended up in an undignified heap at the bottom of the rock slope and then, with an air of nonchalance he trotted to one side and climbed up the pile of boulders there and disappeared under the overhanging heather at the top. Why he didn’t do this in the first place we will never know. Was it sheer male pig-headedness and a stubborn refusal to accept the obvious facts? If it was, perhaps otters share some DNA with humans!
Lee
In 2011, on the Western Isles of Scotland we were feeling adventurous. Instead of visiting another of our many favourite sites for birds, flowers and otters, we decided to seek out a totally fresh site for otters and headed south onto South Uist. Here we put on our trusty welly boots, me carrying my Zeiss 8x42 FLs, and began the trek to a remote east coast headland overlooking a narrow channel between the main island and an off-shore islet.
It was a hell of a trek, but the weather was glorious, and around us we could hear the calls of Curlews, and overhead the cackles of Red-throated Divers as they commuted between their tiny nesting lochans, and their foraging grounds. We reached the coast and gratefully collapsed onto a small eminence over-looking the channel. We had only been there about half an hour, when we spotted an otter swimming up the channel towards us. It was periodically submerging, and probably using the technique of flexing its entire body to propel itself, because when it re-surfaced we could see how much closer it was so it was swimming much faster than when simply using its feet.
There wasn’t time to stand up and look for cover to hide behind so we sat motionless and hoped that the otter would swim by without noticing us. How wrong can you be? It was almost alongside us, and only about 5 metres away when it spotted us just as it was about to submerge. Instead, it did a ‘double-take’, its head swivelling back from its diving position to allow it to look at us. We have never seen an otter so surprised. Amazingly it pressed on, but having swum perhaps another 3-4 metres it stopped dead in the water, and twisted around to look at us, before promptly resuming its course. And then it did the whole thing all over again: stopped, turned around, stared in amazement, swam-on.
This was one totally puzzled otter who could not believe its eyes, and so has become known to us ever since as ‘Disbelieving Otter’. It is quite possible it had never seen a human before and since we were sitting down and not presenting the classic ‘standing upright on two legs’ human posture, we did not elicit its instinctive fear of humans, just its curiosity. We would have loved to know what it was thinking.
Have you ever seen one of those scenes in a movie where someone digs his/her nails into a blackboard and drag them across it, creating a teeth-shattering screeching noise? In 2019 we watched a male otter (me looking through a pair of SF 8x42s) doing something that should have been creating a similar piercing racket.
We were on the Western Isles of Scotland on Benbecula at an east coast site, watching out for otters, divers (loons) and skuas, when a male otter came swimming into view and cruised up a nearby inlet. We expected him to swim out of sight, he seemed so concentrated and committed to making progress, but suddenly he turned ninety degrees and headed for the southern shore a few metres away.
We couldn’t believe he was headed to that shore because it was a sheer rock face with no visible holes or overhangs where he might have had a den. What on earth would he do when he got there? Well, he began climbing up the almost vertical rock face, clinging on with what seemed like a super-hero’s gravity-defying climbing ability, and by golly he reached about 2/3rds of the way up when physics finally overcame determination, and he came to a halt.
And then, after a few seconds it happened. Despite the muscles on all four of his legs bulging with the effort, and despite what must have been his entire compliment of claws clamped onto the rock surface, he began sliding slowly, ever so slowly, backwards down the rock slope. We couldn’t hear a ‘blackboard screech’ but it desperately looked as though there should have been one. He ended up in an undignified heap at the bottom of the rock slope and then, with an air of nonchalance he trotted to one side and climbed up the pile of boulders there and disappeared under the overhanging heather at the top. Why he didn’t do this in the first place we will never know. Was it sheer male pig-headedness and a stubborn refusal to accept the obvious facts? If it was, perhaps otters share some DNA with humans!
Lee
