You are welcome to join me in this 8th 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.
There are some things in life that you feel you can rely on. I don’t mean taxes, or spirited discussions on Birdforum, although they both certainly qualify, I am referring to Swifts swooping through the sky, Woodpeckers making holes in trees and Kestrels hovering. Because of this there was a time when if you asked me ‘where do you find Dippers Cinclus cinclus?’ I would have confidently said ‘rivers’. For we have seen many a Dipper whirring low over the surface of rivers, both fast- and slow-flowing, and landing on half-submerged rocks before curtseying a couple of times, then submerging themselves and apparently walking about the river-bed, searching for food items.
So it was somewhat of a surprise for us to be sitting next to the huge freshwater lake called Loch Maree of north-west Scotland in September 1986, and watching a Dipper land on the surface of the loch, bob up and down on it like a duck, then dive below the surface for at least a full minute, before popping up on the surface again, and floating there as if this was all in a day’s normal business for them. Through my Zeiss Dialyt BGA 10x40s I could see the Dipper floating high in the water like a galleon that had unloaded its cargo and looking completely at home.
At its deepest, Loch Maree plunges 110 metres but at the point where the Dipper was diving it was close to 10 metres deep. Of course we do not know the precise depth, but for sure it wasn’t shallow and there were no rocks breaking the surface nearby. This has forever changed our view of Dippers which are clearly far more adventurous and aquatically capable than we had previously realised.
A couple of days later and a few miles to the south, we hiked over the northern coast of Upper Loch Torridon, and scanned the surface hoping for a better view of the shoal of herring we had caught glimpses of a few days before. At least, we believe they were herring as we had read that shoals of them had visited this loch for as long as could be remembered. It was an awesome sight, seeing a wide expanse of the loch literally boiling with the turmoil created by the fish, and this caused by shoals far smaller than those that visited in the dim and distant past.
Unfortunately, and in the usual way of these things, now that we were in an elevated position and would have had a far better view of the shoal, it declined to show itself. However, the view was breath-taking and as always when next to the sea, we had the feeling that anything could turn up. And it did.
Sitting on an eminence on top of, not a cliff exactly, but certainly a steep hillside maybe 15-20 metres above the sea, we had a commanding view and, it being a very calm day with the merest hint of a breeze, we could hear the waves down below. Mercifully, the sun was strong so despite the calm conditions we were not troubled be the dreaded Scottish midges.
It was in the mid-afternoon when we heard a kind of rasping, drawn-out squeak, that kept being interrupted, or at least it stopped and started, with no discernible pattern. Was it a bird, we asked ourselves? Didn’t really sound like a bird, in fact it didn’t sound like anything with which we were familiar. It seemed to fade somewhat and then come back strongly and suddenly it seemed to clearly come from down below. We stood up and peered over the edge and down to the sea, and there, to our delight and surprise was an adult otter hanging on to a cub by the scruff of its neck, and dragging it through the water.
Through my Dialyts I could see that the mother wasn’t keeping the cub above the surface of the loch but was intermittently submerging its head and when it emerged above water the cub was protesting at this treatment. It was so small we could imagine this might have been its first experience of semi-submergence in sea water. In the west of Scotland, otter mothers often give birth in natal holts some distance from the sea and their foraging sites, but at some point the mothers take their cubs closer to the sea so they can spend more time fishing to support their nursing of rapidly growing cubs, and less time commuting between their foraging territory and the natal holt.
Since then we have had literally hundreds of encounters with female otters and their cubs, but we have never seen a cub being transferred by their mother in this way. What a treat for us even if the cub didn’t agree!
Lee
There are some things in life that you feel you can rely on. I don’t mean taxes, or spirited discussions on Birdforum, although they both certainly qualify, I am referring to Swifts swooping through the sky, Woodpeckers making holes in trees and Kestrels hovering. Because of this there was a time when if you asked me ‘where do you find Dippers Cinclus cinclus?’ I would have confidently said ‘rivers’. For we have seen many a Dipper whirring low over the surface of rivers, both fast- and slow-flowing, and landing on half-submerged rocks before curtseying a couple of times, then submerging themselves and apparently walking about the river-bed, searching for food items.
So it was somewhat of a surprise for us to be sitting next to the huge freshwater lake called Loch Maree of north-west Scotland in September 1986, and watching a Dipper land on the surface of the loch, bob up and down on it like a duck, then dive below the surface for at least a full minute, before popping up on the surface again, and floating there as if this was all in a day’s normal business for them. Through my Zeiss Dialyt BGA 10x40s I could see the Dipper floating high in the water like a galleon that had unloaded its cargo and looking completely at home.
At its deepest, Loch Maree plunges 110 metres but at the point where the Dipper was diving it was close to 10 metres deep. Of course we do not know the precise depth, but for sure it wasn’t shallow and there were no rocks breaking the surface nearby. This has forever changed our view of Dippers which are clearly far more adventurous and aquatically capable than we had previously realised.
A couple of days later and a few miles to the south, we hiked over the northern coast of Upper Loch Torridon, and scanned the surface hoping for a better view of the shoal of herring we had caught glimpses of a few days before. At least, we believe they were herring as we had read that shoals of them had visited this loch for as long as could be remembered. It was an awesome sight, seeing a wide expanse of the loch literally boiling with the turmoil created by the fish, and this caused by shoals far smaller than those that visited in the dim and distant past.
Unfortunately, and in the usual way of these things, now that we were in an elevated position and would have had a far better view of the shoal, it declined to show itself. However, the view was breath-taking and as always when next to the sea, we had the feeling that anything could turn up. And it did.
Sitting on an eminence on top of, not a cliff exactly, but certainly a steep hillside maybe 15-20 metres above the sea, we had a commanding view and, it being a very calm day with the merest hint of a breeze, we could hear the waves down below. Mercifully, the sun was strong so despite the calm conditions we were not troubled be the dreaded Scottish midges.
It was in the mid-afternoon when we heard a kind of rasping, drawn-out squeak, that kept being interrupted, or at least it stopped and started, with no discernible pattern. Was it a bird, we asked ourselves? Didn’t really sound like a bird, in fact it didn’t sound like anything with which we were familiar. It seemed to fade somewhat and then come back strongly and suddenly it seemed to clearly come from down below. We stood up and peered over the edge and down to the sea, and there, to our delight and surprise was an adult otter hanging on to a cub by the scruff of its neck, and dragging it through the water.
Through my Dialyts I could see that the mother wasn’t keeping the cub above the surface of the loch but was intermittently submerging its head and when it emerged above water the cub was protesting at this treatment. It was so small we could imagine this might have been its first experience of semi-submergence in sea water. In the west of Scotland, otter mothers often give birth in natal holts some distance from the sea and their foraging sites, but at some point the mothers take their cubs closer to the sea so they can spend more time fishing to support their nursing of rapidly growing cubs, and less time commuting between their foraging territory and the natal holt.
Since then we have had literally hundreds of encounters with female otters and their cubs, but we have never seen a cub being transferred by their mother in this way. What a treat for us even if the cub didn’t agree!
Lee
