How wildlife on the Water of Leith helped me recover from surgery

BBC News

07-03-2025

A Scottish accountant has captured hundreds of hours of footage of wildlife on a city centre river while recovering from knee replacement surgery.Tom Kelly's remarkable recordings include otters and their cubs, kingfishers and herons in their natural habitat on Edinburgh's Water of Leith. He began documenting the wildlife in January 2021, after doctors advised him to walk as much as possible to aid his rehabilitation.The 60-year-old has since walked 5,000 miles and made a full recovery while gathering the film.
Mr Kelly collects and records statistics on the river's otters and kingfishers, both protected species.He also has several trail cameras along the 13-mile stretch from Balerno to Leith, which have captured a lot of nocturnal behaviour."I started off with eight or nine cameras, now I have seven or eight but it's not because it's been stolen, it's simply that I've just forgotten where I've put it," he said.He has recorded a lot of footage of one of the river's three female otters with her two cubs.Cubs stay with their mothers for 12 months and are taught in different stages how to hunt for food.Mr Kelly said: "The cubs aren't waterproof for the first 10 weeks so they come out of their hole after that and the the mum starts giving them dead fish."So she'll kill the fish and then the will start getting used to handling the fish."Then after about six weeks she'll give them live fish and they have to guddle this fish flipping about and try to control it and then eat it."Then she takes them out and they have to catch their own fish."The cubs on the river are currently trying to catch fish at night so walkers in the area are less likely to see them.
Mr Kelly, who walks along the river about five days a week, can tell the otters apart from markings and scars on their face and chest but also from the number of ticks on their ears, which are white against the otters brown fur.He places cameras where he sees fox, roe deer, and badger prints at the edge of the water."Fox prints are different from dog prints, one's more splayed out and one's more the shape of a rugby ball," Mr Kelly told BBC Scotland News."I've read that foxes can hear the ticking of a watch from 50 yards away so this is when cameras come in.
"If you leave the camera there for a week you get all sorts of different wildlife, it's great, it's like opening a present on Christmas morning you never know what you're going to get.""One morning I saw a weasel. It's just nuts in the middle of a busy city centre and there is a weasel sitting there - it's just amazing on the Water of Leith," he added.Mr Kelly also has an exhibition in the Water of Leith Visitor Centre in Edinburgh.He suffered early-onset arthritis in both knees."I was meant to have my other knee replaced but with all the walking I've done, I've managed to put off the surgery completely, which is amazing," he said.