Grey Seals at Donna Nook

The seals really couldn't care less about the GR4 tornados at 100ft on full afterburner or even dropping bombs close by. I guess it comes from having no avian predators down the millenia - in any case they have other things on their mind: Male grey seals fight it out over mating rights


Threat technique in wet mud conditions - once you get some speed up you can just glide over the mud with minimum skin friction losses while you close in mouth open and roaring.


Fat pup. Thin mum has probably gone out to sea and won't be returning. Free meals are over forever. Probably comes as quite a shock.


Fat mum with thin pup...this will soon swap around as she doesn't feed for the next 4 weeks and loses 65kg, while pup puts on 43kg. That seems quite an efficient energy exchange considering she must use some to tick over for 4 weeks also. Probably much better than my gas boiler.

We made the autumn pilgrimage to Donna Nook for the birth of grey seal pups trying to miss the masses (of the human variety) by getting there early. Stacks of pups again, probably over 1000 pups at this site this year. Just waiting for a pod of killer whales to discover snack sized seals are on the menu here....