Morag Sinclair
The River Keeps Its Secrets
An otter is rarely the first thing you see. On a Highland riverbank in late winter, with frost still holding the shadow of the gorge and the water running clear and low, you might walk a mile without any sense that a predator is working the same stretch. That is rather the point. Otters are creatures of evidence, not encounter. Learning to read what they leave behind turns a pleasant walk into something closer to a conversation.
Slow outdoor living begins with lowering your expectations of spectacle. You are not really searching for an animal. You are learning a river's habits, one bank at a time, until the chances of a glimpse quietly improve on their own.
Start With the Spraint
Spraint is the otter's calling card — droppings left deliberately on flat stones, tussocks, log ends and gravel spits, usually at the water's edge or on a low ledge beneath a bridge. These are not casual deposits. They mark territory and carry news between individuals, and they often appear at points where a river narrows or where two burns meet.
Fresh spraint is black, soft and tarry. Older spraint dries to a grey-brown and eventually crumbles, so a scatter of different ages tells you the site is being used regularly. The smell is distinctive once you know it — faintly sweet and fishy, sometimes described as jasmine or hay. Crouch, look, and breathe: you will learn it in a morning.
- Check the tops of boulders and the flat stones below bridges.
- Look for a small pile, often with a smear at one end where the tail has passed.
- Examine the contents: fish scales, small bones and the shiny wing cases of beetles all point to a varied diet.
Prints, Slides and Runs
Otter prints are easily confused with those of a large dog or a fox, but the shape gives them away. Look for five toes and a broad, roughly kidney-shaped pad, often with a webbing impression between the toes — especially in soft mud or fine silt. The front foot is small and round, about six or seven centimetres across; the hind foot is longer and narrower.
Along the bank, other signs build the picture. A slide is a smooth, polished chute in grass or mud where otters enter and leave the water repeatedly. A run is a narrow, worn path through vegetation leading from one pool to the next. Both are worth noting quietly and then leaving well alone.
Timing Your Visit
Otters are often described as nocturnal, and in busy or disturbed areas that is broadly true. But in quiet Highland glens, particularly in winter when daylight is scarce, they are frequently active by day — with peaks at first light and again in the last hour before dusk.
The practical lesson is that the best tracking happens when you are not expecting to see anything at all. Arrive before dawn. Walk slowly upstream, into the wind where you can, and pause often. Rivers carry scent and sound a long way, and an otter will know you are there long before you know about it.
- Best months: late winter and early spring, when water is cold and clear and vegetation is low.
- Best light: the first hour after sunrise, the last hour before sunset.
- Best conditions: after a spate has dropped and the water is settling.
Watching Without Being Noticed
If you do find an otter, the reward is in restraint. Stop moving. Keep low, use a tree or bank as a screen, and stay still rather than reaching for a better angle. An otter fishing will surface, crunch, dive and move on in a steady rhythm; interrupting that rhythm may send it elsewhere for the rest of the day.
Keep a good distance — thirty metres or more where possible. Avoid approaching a holt, which is often a cavity in a bank, beneath tree roots or among boulders. Never follow a slide down to the water's edge, and keep dogs on a lead near any stretch you suspect is being used.
Packing for a Slow Day on the Bank
The kit for this kind of day is modest. Warm layers, waterproof boots, a flask, and something to sit on so that you are comfortable enough to stay put. Binoculars help, though at close range they can be a hindrance. A small notebook is more useful than a camera.
- Record where you saw spraint, which way the river was running, and the weather.
- Note what you did not see, too — absence is information.
- Leave every stone and tussock exactly as you found it.
The pleasure of this work is that it asks very little of you beyond patience. You will spend most of a morning seeing nothing conclusive and enjoying it anyway. Then one day the spraint will be fresh, the prints still sharp in the silt, and a dark shape will slide off a rock twenty metres upstream — and you will understand the river a little better than you did before.
