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Sunday 23 November 2014

Seal of approval.

Nothing to do with canals but we did cross the Humber and see the sea so a good excuse to show you some cute pictures. On Saturday we drove over to Lincolnshire to see the seals at Donna Nook Nature Reserve run by the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust. It took about an hour to get there over the Humber Bridge and down to the coast. It is down some small roads but there was plenty of traffic going the same way and the car park was quite full at 1100. It was £2-00 to park on the farmers land but I hope that they will make a good donation to the Wildlife Trust at the end of the year. The field was wet but quite well compacted so not too much trouble getting on and off. However after a day and night of rain today I wouldn't like to be trying to get on or off for the next couple of days. They do have a tractor handy to pull you out if required. It is a short walk over the dunes and to the saltmarsh/beach. The Wildlife Trust have erected a strong fence at the margins of the dunes so to prevent interference of the seals. 43000 visitors went to see the seals in 2006. However the fence is low so does not interfere with viewing and obligingly the seals come right up to the fence in places. You should never touch the seals as they can bite and human scent may mean that a pup is abandoned by it's mother.

When pups are born they are have a yellowy white coat that turns more white after a few days. This one must be a few days old. They are about 14kg when born.

The seals at Donna Nook are Grey seals, also known as Atlantic seals, and not the much more common harbour or common seals. They only started using Donna Nook as a colony since the 1970's but numbers have been increasing. In the UK we have 40% of the world's population of Grey seals, 90% of which are in Scotland but this colony is of growing importance. The Uk population is estimated to be between 100 and 170000.

This is a female or cow grey seal. They are about 1.8m long and can weigh 150kg. The common seals are roughly about half the size of them. They hard to tell apart when in the water and wet but other than the size it can be seen that the greys have a 'roman nose' where as the common seals have a more dog like snout.

Donna Nook was, or even may still be an RAF firing range. As the beacons etc are in good condition I suspect that it is still used. However the land was given over as a Nature reserve around 2002 so I suspect that they must only use it 'out of season'. The seals come ashore at the end of October and are gone again at the end of January. They start to give birth a few days after landing and this year the first pup was born on 25th October.

There is a fair bit of 'argy bargy' between the cows that seem to warn others away from their cubs and the bulls that are battling for dominance over the most cows they can watch over. Neither the cows or the bulls feed whilst on the shore so I can understand them getting a bit techy as I'm just like that if I don't regular meals

The pups suckle 4 or five times a day for two to three weeks (the average is 18 days) and then the mother leaves them to it. The females mate again before leaving the beach and then are gone. The fetus develops for a week and then goes into remission for three months before restarting growth to ensure that they are due when the return to the beach the next year. They return to the same beach and they can live for around 45 years.

This pup is only a few hours old as can be seen by the blood from the placenta. (There are piles of after birth around the place if you are hyper squemish). It looked as though it's mother was ignoring it as she kept shuffling away but we were assured by one of the wardens that it had had its first feed at least. There is approximately 10% mortality of the pubs on the beach, mainly through starvation and abandonment. Another 40 % don't make it through their first year. Last year they also had to contend with the tidal surge in December that added about 2m to the height of the tide and scattered the seals up and down the coast. However wardens did not see mass deaths of the pups and as the year had been a record year, 1676 pups born, they are not expecting much effect on the population. This year all ready they have counted over 1300 pups and the peak is usually at the end of November.

It is well worth a trip out to see them if you are anywhere near or going past as they are after all the UK's larges carnivore.

2 comments:

Marilyn, nb Waka Huia said...

I am not sure why, but I have never associated England with seal populations! Very interesting stuff, Tony. Do you know where they go in the summer?
We have several seal colonies around the NZ coastline, and in places you walk through them when doing beach walks - at Red Rocks and Makara on Wellington's southern and western coastline respectively, and at Kaikoura in the South Island, for instance. They are pretty territorial and can move damn fast, even on land!

NB Holderness said...

Hi Marilyn, You see seals just about every time you are on the coast, and we even saw a common seal when we were going up the Thames. I know they can move fast as even the massive elephant seal can shift at a good rate of knots when they want to as I almost tripped over one on South Georgia in the South Atlantic. They spend two thirds of their time at sea and between fishing trips they may pull out on isolated beaches rocks etc. In Scotland they prefer rocky places. The eat fish, shellfish, squid and octopus and can dive for as long as 9 mins. The Latin name for the grey seal is halicheorus gryphus which actually means 'seapig with hooked nose'.