In Search of Otters on Islay

I’m sat on the foreshore of Loch Indaal, hoping for an otter. This happens a lot when I’m on the islands. There’s pleasure to be had in lingering, waiting, looking. Your eye gets drawn by the quiet rock-hop of a wheatear, or the sky-tilt of a gannet. You stare, and you marvel a little, then it’s back to watching the shoreline. At times I find myself scanning the bays without knowing I’m doing it, searching for the furtive swim-and-flip of the creature that beguiles me more than any other.

Lutra lutra. The Eurasian otter. It besots people for fun. Nature writer Robert Macfarlane calls it “a shape-shifter… a supple slider out of holt and into water”. For poet Liz Brownlee it’s a “quicksilver whizz of bubbles and fizz”. In 2020, the National Trust for Scotland held a poll to find the nation’s favourite animal. Some 60,000 votes were cast and the otter took top spot, though it was far too shy to accept the praise, and in fact far too busy skittering out of sight to give it any thought at all. Point out an otter and it’s usually gone by the time you raise your finger.