Spot the dot

Every year around this time I report on the appearance of a seal pup down in the cove below the cliffs. See if you can spot it. Follow a vertical line up from the middle of the gap between my boots until you reach a white dot. That's it, with its mother close by (see extra). The pup's still snowy coat suggests it was born very recently.

A little way out in the water a male seal waits for a mating opportunity. Probably not the father of this pup but  birthing and mating takes place around the same time: it's a convenient opportunity when the females are preoccupied with their babies. However, owing to a delay in the implantation of the fertilised egg, gestation doesn't begin for three months ensuring that the babies are born when the mothers are well nourished at the end of the summer.

(You can read about embrionic diapause here.)

To my great relief I managed to free my jammed  zoom, mentioned a couple of blips ago, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to capture the seals.