Drama down below

A seal pup has been born in the nearest cove, 15 minutes walk from me. There's no access down there but you get a bird's eye view if you lie on the cliff edge and peer over. Today when I arrived the mother was suckling her baby on the shingle and this was the first shot I took.

The sea was choppy and the waves were churning into the cove, swirling up every few minutes as far as the rock on the left. The pup, having drunk its fill, moved up towards its mother and the pair embraced for a while, patting each other with their flippers. I wondered if the baby was anxious about the encroaching waves and the mother was reassuring it. It was tempting to interpret their interaction according to human sentiments.

But out in the bay a male seal was rolling and diving and the female was aware of his presence. She turned away from her pup and slithered into the water to join him. (Grey seals give birth and mate again almost simultaneously.)

The baby seal was left alone on the shingle (this is normal: the mother comes ashore to suckle around 6 times a day until the pup is ready to join her in the water at 3 weeks old. They communicate by calling to each other; the pup sounds uncannily like a human baby.)

The waves swirled closer and closer and the baby seemed disconcerted, moving away from the rock that appeared to provide a little protection. It started to make for the edge of the cove but a wave caught it and rolled it over. Again it headed for foot of the cliff and again the flow of the incoming tide tumbled it over. I was getting seriously concerned. The mother was still out in the bay, not far away but more interested in her suitor than her infant, or so it seemed.

At last the baby seal emerged and appeared to get a purchase on the beach, inching itself up towards the protection of the rock wall. I felt relieved. Back home I checked the tide table: it was at its height and would shortly start to ebb. But I had to wonder: did the mother seal 'know' when she left her baby just at the high tide line that it would be safe, or was she so distracted by her potential mate that she put its life in jeopardy? Obviously there's no way of telling. These little dramas play out over and over again at this time of year and some end in tragedy.


(Mother seals have been shown to exhibit varying parenting styles, attentive or diffident, according to their individual personalities.)

This is the first shot of 35 that I took. There's a smaller selection of them here, starting with a larger version of this one and illustrating the sequence of events I've described if you want to glance through them.