On the Lookout for Otters - A Photographer's Point of View
By Martin Urch
Martin Urch is a published nature photographer and conservation storyteller. He is a member of the Mammal Society and his entry to Mammal Photographer of The Year 2021 was Highly Commended. You can find more of Martin's work here.
Learn more about otters here. You can help us save this charismatic mammal by becoming a member of the Mammal Society today for as little as £3 a month!
Otters are exceptionally playful and a joy to see in the wild. This blog explains an approach to sighting and filming otters in their natural environment.
The trick to otter (Lutra lutra) spotting is research, patience, and a generous dose of luck. Water surface bubbles are often the first indication of otter activity. While otters close their nostrils beneath the surface, water pressure causes air to be forced from their coats leaving a trail of bubbles on the surface. Otters also leave a V-shaped wake behind them while they swim with their head at the surface. Thus, water holds clues to the whereabouts of a nearby otter.
Various land signs give away their presence too. On soft ground, look out for two inch-wide, five-toed paw-print tracks. Look for trampled vegetation and for slipways into the water made by a belly-sliding otter at their favourite haul-out. Otter poo, known as spraints, act as scented messages that help them find mates and defend their territory. You will recognise otter spraints as they often contain visible fish bones and have a distinctive smell reminiscent of jasmine tea.
Once an otter’s territory is located, consider environmental conditions in your otter-watch planning; e.g. we photographed these Eurasian Otters in a Scottish sea loch, where knowing the times of high-water and low-water was essential. An otter’s diet is mostly made up of fish and eels (though it happily eats waterbirds given the chance), and their estuary prey was most abundant as the water turned. The hour before and hour after tidal change was our optimal time for sightings.
Once basic necessities of nutrition and shelter are satisfied, young and old otters regularly come ashore for grooming, play and social interaction. These secondary needs serve to reinforce social structures within their ‘lodge’, and aid generational learning for cubs to acquire key survival skills. After swimming in salt water, otters may also search out a nearby body of fresh water to cleanse their fur. The sight of a wild otter family socialising is heart-stopping to witness.
The golden rule of all wildlife photography is “stay invisible”. You want to record natural behaviour and must not scare otters to move away from the safety of their established den and feeding territory. Consider your hide carefully. Otters are fully protected under Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, meaning it is illegal to capture, kill, disturb, or injure an otter, regardless of circumstance.
An otter’s most important sense for hunting is eyesight, and their visual resolution is equally good in water and air. Wind direction is also critical to your location. Otters have an acute sense of smell. You need to remain downwind for human scent to be invisible. Finally, stay quiet. Otters have very good hearing, and an otter's sense of hearing is probably more important than smell for sensing danger.
Otters are elusive but are thankfully becoming more common in Scotland and England. They were threatened with extinction in the late 1950’s, and numbers have recovered slowly. A ban on hunting in 1978 and river quality improvements means otters can now be found in the watercourses and coast of every British country.
Sadly, it is not all good news. Cardiff University and Natural Resources Wales released survey findings in January 2022 that reports otter populations in Wales have dropped 20% since 2010. We cannot be complacent about the ongoing recovery of the otter and must maintain vigilance on water quality in our rivers.
Please don’t get too close. It is not about getting the perfect picture, but more about capturing the visceral feeling that we experience in solitude with wild nature. I recommend using binoculars for observations and a super-telephoto lens in filming. The photographs in this article were all taken on a DSLR camera with 500mm.
I hope my pictures ignite a fascination with wild otters. Something energising happens to our mind when watching their beauty and playfulness.
Words & images © Martin Urch.