Otterly Fabulous

Our visit to the Isle of Mull was wonderful in so many different ways. Our outings exploring the area around Duart Castle were unexpectedly great, we also had some brilliant experiences visiting the other smaller islands off the west coast of Mull - Iona, Lunga and Staffa, but it was an Otter I most wanted to see. The question was, would it live up to expectations having had some amazing experiences the previous year. I certainly hoped so, especially as it was Bob's first time to Mull and he'd only had a few otter encounters before, one of which was when he was a young boy.

Like last time, I booked two days with photographer Brian Boyes, but this time a week apart. Even though wildlife sightings are never guaranteed, I knew we stood our best chance of seeing otters with him. He knew the island so much better than us, plus, he could drop us off if we were lucky enough to have sightings and wait for us elsewhere. There aren't always car parks nearby and I was advised you shouldn't park in the passing places. It also meant there were 3 pairs of eyes looking out for our target species, which was definitely an advantage. Of course, over the course of our first day, Brian was also able to educate us on how to look for signs of their presence in an area and more importantly, the best practices for photographing otters - the dos and don'ts - always putting wildlife first and our desires second, which to be honest we always try to keep at the forefront of our minds when we are out in nature.

On that first day, the morning was really slow. We weren't having much luck spotting any otters, though there were plenty of other things of interest to stop and photograph to help pass the time, such as Hooded Crows and Oystercatchers.

I wasn't worried the morning had slipped by without an otter sighting. The same thing happened the previous year. There was still plenty more time available to us and I remained optimistic it was just a matter of time. Funnily enough, it was about lunchtime when we spotted a dog otter (male) out in the water hunting for food. Any thoughts of eating our lunch were far from our mind. Swiftly, but quietly, we exited the vehicle, making sure to close the car doors softly. We made our way down to the beach, only moving when the otter had dived down for food out of sight. When it resurfaced, we stopped moving, crouched down low and waited until it was safe to move again. This is the best way to move into a good spot without disturbing the otter. Eventually, we were both positioned hiding behind a couple of boulders on the beach and we waited...and waited. The dog otter seemed content to stay out in the water eating whatever it had caught. Forty minutes passed and I wondered if it would ever come ashore.

Eventually, it did!

The otter swam ashore with its catch still in its mouth. Only later did I notice that he had a pink nose, which is its nickname. Its these kind of markings that help people to differentiate between the resident otters.

Amazingly, he emerged from the water in line with where I was hiding behind a rock, not much more than five metres away. I couldn't believe my luck. He stopped, shook off some water, and then pawed over the seaweed moving even closer towards me, totally unaware of my presence. He settled into a small dip within metres of me. It didn't mean I had a perfect view though, because there were other rocks between us. But, that didn't worry me. I was simply enjoying the moment.

Although it might look like the otter is biting into the rock in the second photo, he's actually just behind it and the rock is obscuring his catch.

In that moment, I was incredibly grateful I'd purchased my new mirrorless camera only days before the holiday. One of its features and the main selling point for me, is that it is silent. There is no click when I take a photo. In fact, this often threw Bob off, as he wondered when I was going to start taking photos, not realising I was already! This meant I could take photos of the otter really close to me without disturbing it at all.

Eventually, the otter moved off from that spot once he was finished eating. He continued a short way along the shoreline, then scrambled up onto the largest rock in the area. He left his spraint on the top before disappearing down the far side and back into the water.

What a privilege!

Whilst Pink Nose was diving in the water again, we were able to reposition ourselves just a little further along the beach, just in case he came back to shore again. Sure enough, he did, a few times. There wasn't such a long wait either, with just 10 minutes passing between each shore visit. The second time was brief, but it was lovely watching him slink low among the seaweed covered rocks.

The third time, the luck was with Bob. The otter came out right in front of him. I was really pleased he was having his own close encounter. The only problem was, Bob was using a 500mm lens! The head of the otter, with the fish in its mouth, filled the frame of his camera. The otter was too close!

I was off to one side and further away, so I didn't take many photos whilst the otter was just in front of Bob. It wasn't the best angle for me. The following photo was taken at 500mm and I haven't cropped the image. At a guess, I might have been about 10 metres away, if that.

Pink Nose didn't stay there too long. Just three minutes later he was on the move again, evidently quite hungry. He headed in my general direction and continued past me, padding through the seaweed along the shoreline. Effortlessly, he slipped into the water, porpoising along and in no time at all was quite far away. That was the last we saw of him. He vanished into the blue.

The whole encounter only lasted one hour from when we first spotted the otter in the water. But, it felt like so much longer than that, the way the time slowly ebbed away. We were so caught up in the moment, enjoying every second of the time we were able to spend with this impressive dog otter. One of the things we were extremely grateful for, was how we were in a quiet place with hardly any other people around. Only towards the end of that hour did another car drive by and spot us and the otter down on the beach. But, they seemed content just to watch from the comfort of their car.

Bob and I were absolutely thrilled that day! It didn't matter that we didn't see another otter later on. In fact, if that was the only otter we saw on the whole holiday, we would have been happy. However, we did have a second day booked with Brian, which we went ahead with during our second week. By then we'd moved to our next cottage in Pennyghael, on the south side of Loch Scridain. The plan was to try a different area and, because the tide times were quite different, he suggested a very, VERY, early pick up. At least he was able to pick us up from outside where we were staying, which was convenient. We headed off around the loch not passing a single car on the road. We had the place to ourselves. Brilliant.

Unlike the previous week where we had to wait hours before seeing an otter, this time we saw one in about 30 minutes. It was Bob that spotted it in the water. Only it wasn't just one, but two! Oh wow! A female and her pup, which wasn't much smaller than herself. They were quite far away from us, near the edge of the seaweed that was floating in the water. There were very few rocks for us to hide behind, which meant staying quite far back. The rocks were wet and slippery and despite being careful, I slipped over. Thankfully, I was crouched low at the time, so it wasn't a bad fall, landing on my butt!

We watched them from a distance for a short time. They even came ashore to eat and groom for about 15 minutes. But, this meant we couldn't really move or get closer without alerting them of our presence. We needed to move ahead of them and into a better spot, but we had to wait until they returned to the water first.

When we got back into Brian's car, he dropped us off again much further round the bay. He pointed out where we should aim for, where there were lots of rocks for us to hide behind. He then left us to it, moving the car to a parking spot, and patiently waited whilst we got into position out of his view (as it turned out). The two otters were still quite a distance away, so this gave us more time to find a suitable spot. At first, we stayed amongst the higher rocks so we could watch their approach. They were still working their way along the bay, always staying fairly close to the edge of the floating seaweed, periodically diving for fish. I noticed they hadn't gone ashore again since that first time. I just hoped they would near us and not just swim by.

At a suitable time, we scrambled over the rocks to a lower position, having to walk through a bit of water to reach them. We lay down side by side on the slope of the same rock, looking over the top of it towards the water. A short while later the otters came into view. To our amazement, they didn't continue to swim by. They came ashore within about 10 metres of us, once again, in line with our position. What luck! Plus, the light was stunning. The early morning sun was just rising from behind us glowing beautifully on these two gorgeous otters. It made the early start all worthwhile!

The female is on the left and the pup on the right. If you look closely you'll see that the right eye of the pup is missing. I didn't notice it at the time. Despite this disadvantage, the youngster seemed to be faring well, which was a good sign. As you can see, they don't have any fish in their mouths. This time they came ashore to rest.

Well actually, it looked like the mum wanted to rest, but the pup was a bit more fidgety. Sadly, whilst not much was happening, the sun slipped behind some clouds and we lost the best of the light. Patiently, we waited to see what might happen next. The mum was ever watchful, always on alert, though they seemed to be unaware of us. I'm not sure what sounds she heard, because to us it was very quiet and peaceful. We only heard one large vehicle drive by the whole time we were there.

It was lovely to watch them grooming themselves and shake off the water from their fur. It was a great opportunity to switch to video mode and capture some of that action. I especially love the movement of the mum's tail as she shakes.

I never imagined I'd have the opportunity to see two otters interacting in this way. It was such a joy and pleasure to see this bond and how they groomed each other. It was such a special moment.

For quite some time we enjoyed watching them, without taking any photos. But the tide was one the way in, and we could see it edging closer to their position. They'd be in the water again before long. We also had to be careful, because we could easily be cut off from the shore, if we left it too late to retreat. However, we couldn't bring ourselves to leave first. We waited for the two of them to head off fishing again before making a move.

For just over an hour and a half we had the pleasure of observing their behaviour. They headed off at 7.10am and we still had quite a bit of the day remaining to explore with Brian. However, we didn't see any more otters. Not that we were complaining. We'd had two wonderful encounters, each unique and unforgettable. The experiences far exceeded our expectations. We were so grateful to Brian for his patience, and sharing his knowledge and passion for otters with us.

They weren't our only attempts to spot otters. Since our cottage was located beside Loch Scridain, on a couple of occasions when the tide was out, we enjoyed walking along the beaches and bays nearby to see if we could see any then. But sadly, we didn't have success. We also woke up really early another morning to see if we could find the same two again, but we didn't have joy with that either, though we saw other things of interest.

On our last full day on the island, the weather forecast was not great. It was overcast and a bit windy and rain was on its way. Since we'd done most of the things we had wanted to already, we decided to take it easy, stay local, get some fresh air and see if we could spot some birds during the morning, whilst it was still dry. The plan was to come back for lunch and relax in the cottage in the afternoon. Only, that's not quite how things worked out!

We headed to the north side of the loch in the car. Although bird watching was on the agenda, we always kept a watchful eye open for otters. But, we saw none. However, we did see lots of other people doing the same thing as us, a little spread apart along the loch side. We found a quiet spot on some rocks away from everyone else. We had a good view in both directions if an otter was close to the shoreline, and also looking further out into the bay. But, still nothing near us. However, Bob was sure that an otter had been spotted closer to where some of the other people were standing around, by the way they were looking through their binoculars. I wasn't convinced, but we decided to head over that way anyway and reparked the car. Sure enough, he'd been right, one had been seen, though it had temporarily disappeared.

We didn't have to wait that long before we spotted it out in the water. It stayed off shore, but was gradually moving along the loch. Although most of the people remained where they were, we decided to get ahead of the otter, like we'd done on our previous encounters. We swiftly walked along the road, trying to keep an eye on roughly where the otter was. Unfortunately, we briefly lost sight of exactly where it was, but I figured it would reapprear soon enough. What I hadn't expected was for it to have already caught up with us. We'd just dropped down onto a beach we could easily access and were walking along the rocks, when suddenly, I noticed the otter walking along the lower stretch of the beach, but coming towards us and up into the grassy area. I quickly alerted Bob. Immediately, we crouched down low and watched how it sipped some freshwater from a brook, then had a shakedown to dispel the water from its fur. Then it moved onwards, staying low. Fabulous!

The otter, a female we think, found herself a bed of seaweed to lie down on and in no time at all she was having a light nap. Periodically, she would wiggle around and groom herself, and then close her eyes again. We didn't dare move, in case of disturbing her. So we remained at the back of the beach, sheltered somewhat from the rain that had started, nestled as close as we could to the scrub. Hunkered down, we continued to watch her.

I loved the way she would roll around. It was fabulous to sometimes have a glimpse of her hands and feet.

At one point, a Common Sandpiper walked right past the sleeping otter! She certainly was enjoying her long rest.

We waited for something more to happen...for an hour! I was really uncomfortable by then, and hungry. Thankfully, and rather fortuitously, I had put a cereal bar in my pocket just in case we got peckish, so we shared that while we patiently waited. Unfortunately, we hadn't been so forward thinking to put on our waterproofs. By this time we were really wet! We hadn't expected to be out so long. More importantly, I was anxious about keeping my camera out of the rain. Most of the other people who'd been watching from the road had either given up, or had retreated to their cars.

Finally, the otter stirred and stretched, and was on the move. Any hopes of her coming along the beach again were dashed when she made a beeline for the water.

She returned to shore quite quickly though with a crab in her mouth, not much further along the beach. So that was worth waiting for. Then she went off hunting again.

We could have gone back to the cottage at that point. But, despite us both being very wet, we felt we should stick with her a bit longer and see what might happen next. She remained out in the water diving, then eating when she resurfaced, repeating this process for quite a while. But, as she did so, she continued to drift along the loch in the same general direction, so it was time to move ahead again. By this time, there were only two others still watching her. They also were walking ahead and ironically stopped exactly where we had been sitting that morning, several hours before. I thought about all that we would've missed if we'd remained there all morning, or simply gone back to the cottage.

We didn't want to crowd the other two, so we continued onwards, hoping the otter wouldn't suddenly change direction. At the end of the beach there was a large inaccessible area where the cliffs fell straight into the water. So, we took a chance and continued beyond there on to the next accessible bit of beach, which must have been in the region of 100m further on. It meant we lost track of the otter until we were on the other side.

Once we were standing at the water's edge, looking back down the loch side, we could see her still hunting, but a lot closer than I was expecting. She was working her way along quite swiftly. Within no time at all, she had made her way to the beach where we were waiting, once again hiding behind rocks. Almost as soon as she reached the beach, she came ashore, with yet another crab in her mouth.

Notice the difference between this last photo when she is emerging from the water and the next, once she's had a shakedown. Her fur looks very different, especially around the head. All the otters we photographed on the trip were in saltwater lochs, but these are river otters. Every day they will retreat up freshwater streams that feed into the lochs, so they can clean their fur.

At one point the otter straightened up in a more alert pose. Something further behind us had disturbed her, but at that point in time we had no idea what. Thankfully, she didn't seem threatened because she stayed where she was and didn't head back into the water straight away.

After coming ashore, she actually edged closer to our position and we were able to have a few last wonderful photos of this fabulous otter.

Once again, she was lying down and wiggling around amongst the seaweed. I think we were a little concerned she'd fall asleep again, but she didn't thankfully. She stayed there for about 20 minutes before heading off again.

This time when she sloped off into the water we didn't move to another position - we let her go in peace. We'd had an amazing two hours in her company and had another truly memorable otter occasion. It was perhaps more special for us because we'd found the otter without the help of a guide and for the most part we'd been alone with her. It was only after she was gone that we stood up and turned around to discover we weren't alone on that beach. There were five others in different positions behind us.

By this time, we were wet, cold and very hungry. It was 3pm and it was time to head back to the cottage to dry off, warm up and eat. So much for a relaxing afternoon indoors reading! But, I wouldn't have changed a thing! I loved every minute of our day.

There was one more final otterly fabulous treat for us before we departed for mainland Scotland on our final morning. Whilst we were sitting down eating our breakfast, Bob spotted an otter in the bay. All week I'd wanted to see an otter from the cottage and we finally did. It remained in sight whilst we finished eating and even when we were loading up the car. Every now and then I'd glance over towards it, smiling, before going back indoors for the next load to carry out. It was a lovely final memory of a wonderful time spent on Mull.

The next post in the series is Other Mull Highlights.