A Blur of Zoology

The phrase ‘life-long fascination’ has always irked me. There are few things that fascinate us at birth which continue to fascinate until death. I can’t claim a life-long fascination for pink Teletubby custard because, although I was consumed with dreams of eating it soon after birth, I’ve since settled for regular, easy-to-find custard. Likewise, I can’t claim a life-long fascination for Scotland because, although I am still fascinated, I was blissfully ignorant of its existence until after I could crawl. 

I became aware of Scotland through PC Plum and Archie teaching me how to fold my socks; through Private Frazer plotting rebellion in Dad’s Army, and through Shrek’s Scottish Accent. But I first began to notice Scotland through nature documentaries. I was instantly smitten, certain that this must be the Serengeti of Europe, the Yellowstone of the British Isles.

Each documentary felt like an extended edition of the Lion King opening. Ospreys, eagles, owls, stags, otters, dolphins, orcas all oozed off the screen in a vivid zoological blur. I would chow down on cereal each night in awe, soaking up stories of stags jostling to protect their dynasty on the Isle of Rum and golden eagles feeding their chicks high up in the Cairngorms. The most memorable story, though, was of an otter family on the Isle of Mull, where the mother had begun to ignore her fully grown pup, trying to convince him to leave and fend for himself.

I didn’t really focus on the storyline, the notion of a child leaving home before the age of 40 seemed laughable in Ireland. What stood out for me was the aesthetics of the landscape in which they lived: a playground of golden kelp and a pond-calm sea blurring towards a horizon of lofty, green mountains. I could immediately place myself in the scene as an adult, sitting on a warm rock with a flask, watching and observing them day after sun soaked day. 

Now, twenty years later, I crawled and shuffled my way out of the car into a pre-dawn grey, trying hard to keep my six-foot-mass out of sight of any otters on the shore. The wind began to flick drizzle into my eyes and I realised with a sense of dread that I had forgotten my hair bobbin. Chaos descended. Wisps of wet hair nagged and snapped at my face with the ferocity of bees protecting their queen. My sight was filled with alternating nauseations of stones, sky and hair. I clawed constantly at my face in an effort to clear a view to what I hoped was an otter-filled sea. Twenty otters could have been doing zumba that day for all the vision I had, but I soon decided to retreat. I used my hands to feel my way along the stones until I eventually smashed my right hand into what I hoped was my car wheel and I pulled myself inside.

Sitting soaked in the car, it occurred to me that my actions out there were somewhat undignified. Even as a kid I would not have gone to this much effort for teletubby custard. But I felt so desperate to find this image in my head, to watch otters in front of kelp and mountains. I had no burning desire to take a photo or anything, I just wanted to be there, a live spectator in an otter’s life for a few moments.

Perhaps the word I have been looking for isn’t fascination or desperation, but obsession. I have an obsession with Scotland which has influenced my calendar choice each year, my phone screensavers and my book preferences, which causes me to rate every stretch of Irish coastline based on its similarity to the otter scene in my mind. Its an obsession which always left me keeping an anxious eye on the sea on Mull, timing all other tourist activites around the tides.

Lionel and I had found our subject before we even got off the ferry, a dark line wriggling its way through the turbulent water. Too much movement for seaweed, too much tail for a seal: this had to be an otter. It was soon swallowed by the waves, leaving only ripples to prove it was there.

The background was also easy to find: one side of a small inlet littered with otter scat. At the turn of the tide, we parked on the opposite shore and followed a wooded track where we sat amongst some boulders to blur our figures. Time passed luxuriously slowly, its presence indicated solely by the seaweed dancing up the beach towards the rocks, pulled by the moon. The gently lapping sea stretched out towards the cloud-riddled hills of Mainland Scotland. There were no otters, maybe the tide was too low, but I was staring at the background to my childhood dreams and I felt refreshingly content with that.

We returned late one evening as the mountains shrugged off the final rays of sun. I had sensibly brought my hair bobbin so the main battle today was not with hair, but midges, thousands of them fighting for the privilege to gorge upon my face and skin. As the dusk settled in, the midge campaign increased and we retreated back to the car, peering out from a rapidly fogging windscreen. A flock of ducks were using the inlet as an airfield, shattering the silence as they touched down on the water with a regularity to rival Heathrow. Once the window fogged beyond any hope of visibility, we decided to climbed back into what was clearly a midge interpretation of a locust swarm. The evening light clung on with barely enough light to silhouette trees, carrot-eating light levels. 

I was just about to whisper more appreciation to Lionel for sitting through hours of midges and boredom for me when a movement caught my eye. In the darkness it barely had form, just a fuzzy, pixelated otter head forming a v-shape through the water. It quickly disintegrated into the darkness and we headed off, giddy with excitement. 

I’d come to Scotland obsessed with an image. I’d found the backdrop and I’d found the subject but it was proving difficult to merge the two. Our island explorations made it difficult to get back to the same spot and our time on Mull was coming to an end. Just as I was beginning to accept that this might be the end of the search, we stumbled on a lead. 

Mull’s roads are full of laybys to allow cars to pass each other on the narrow roads. They are often littered with people out of their cars with cameras and binoculars glued to their eyes, staring at unknown natural curiosities. Lionel reasoned that these were the perfect places to ask people about otters. It was an approach he adopted for everyone and when walking he would often veer off towards a distant walker to ask questions. This always proved very useful and gave us a range of information about everything from how long a walk would take to the bread-to-date ratio of a local sticky toffee pudding. 

Stopping to ask questions proved harder in the car: I was in control of the car and slightly more afraid of asking people questions than Lionel so I would often put my foot on the accelerator and try to flee. It would take much coaxing before Lionel could convince me to pull in and ask what they were looking at, which usually meant the people in question were mere blobs on the horizon. The first time we interrogated these wildlife watchers, we had been driving along the shores of Loch Na Keal, a sea loch where the sea flowed inland right towards the heart of Mull. We were pointed to a tree where a large brown blob could be seen in its branches. We looked through their telescope to find the blob was a sea-eagle, its feathers ruffling majestically in the breeze. They directed us to a spot where otters were regularly seen every day at dawn. 

And so, on our final day, I found myself in another prey-dawn grey.Once angled so that my open window faced away from the rain, the shelter of the car allowed me to take in my surroundings. One large rock dominated the kelp-strewn shallows of Loch na Keal, the otter’s favourite haunt. Beyond the loch stood mountains blessed by glaciation, towering dramatically against the dark clouds. The rain took shifts with the rising sun, conjuring rainbows and golden water droplets. Finally, time for otters. My sea eagle friends soon arrived and we wordlessly kept watch in our metal hides. I scanned the seaweed, expectant for what was to come. The water slowly rose up the rock while I scanned, fidgeted, daydreamed, dozed, but still nothing came. The stakes mounted, this was my last day, my last chance to see the image I had held in my mind for so long, but the landscape remained empty, the waters rose, the rain fell and the otters sheltered. As the rock took one final gasp for air and vanished below the tide, I knew it took any hope of more otters with it. Eventually I felt I had staved off sleep and food long enough and accepted that, for this trip, this was as far as I could come to seeing an otter family.

But this landscape was beautiful. The mountains made me want to rejoice. I had seen its home, watched its rock, lived its tides, perhaps that was enough to soften the blow. I started the car engine and took off.

We spent our last day walking a remote beach where a collector showed us some fossils which lay exposed in the rock.

Our drive home took us away from the sea into the hills of Mull. I had begun expressing my otter fustration to Lionel when, out of the blue, a short-eared owl flew low over the car. I swerved the car into the closest layby in a somewhat dubious manoeuvre and grabbed my binoculars. I took a deep breath, closed my mouth and dived out of the car into midge infested air. Through the thick body of midges I could just make it out. Quartering over the side of a field. It’s shape was nostalgic, another childhood documentary dream.

And that, happily, closed our final day on Mull, the day I’d failed to watch otters was saved by an owl. Mull is home to a zoological blur but this one is more realistic and three-dimensional than the one in documentaries. There’s little scope for armchair travelling and no room for cereal. These are animals which pester and swarm your face or distract you from driving; animals which evade you or are usually blobs too distant for the naked eye, a sort of zoology which is so much more frustrating and so much more invigorated. Suitably enchanted, I led my entourage of midges back to the car, bound for the mainland.