TIM FINALLY VISITS DONNA NOOK TO PHOTOGRAPH GREY SEALS, AND WITNESSES THE MIRACLE OF BIRTH.
Donna Nook, north Lincolnshire, is a place I’ve been wanting to visit to photograph grey seals for many years. But it’s a long way from my home in Wellington in Shropshire to this national nature reserve on the southern side of the mouth of the Humber, and somehow I’d always found a reason not to go. This year, however, I was determined to make it for the winter pupping season.
After leaving at 6am on a cold, dark and drizzly morning in late November, I arrived in the car park just before 10am, and was immediately surprised by how many people were milling about. I normally try to avoid crowds, but I wasn’t going to have that choice today. At weekends, one of the wardens told me later, it’s not unusual to have 7,000 visitors a day.
I took the short walk along the boardwalk to the beach just 200m away. There was a van selling food but I decided to resist its charms, at least for now – I was here for the seals, not the sausages!
I had little idea what to expect from Donna Nook, and I’d assumed that I’d have to scout around to find the residents, but as I came over the brow of the dune, I was stopped in my tracks – seals were everywhere.
There was a young pup lying on the sand almost directly in front of me, its mother on her side close by, while further away two bulls were gearing up for a fight. All the seals were separated from the onlookers by a wooden fence, and they stayed as close or far away from it and the crowds as they wished.
I stayed several hours, wandering up and down the beach path with the hundreds of other people who had made the trip. I was surprised by the human-like expressions of the seals and the way they cuddled their pups. They even appeared to be dreaming as they slept, their flippers flapping as if they were swimming. The pups’ barks sounded as if they were shouting “Mum” like children in a playground.
And that would have been that, had I not chanced upon one final spectacle just as I was leaving – a group of 40 or 50 people had gathered on a spot on the path close to a female on the other side of the fence, and I realised she was getting ready to give birth.
I don’t know how long she’d been in labour, but soon after I arrived the pup started to show, and from then it was less than a couple of minutes for it to leave the world of its mother’s womb and enter ours.
The amniotic sac hit the sand intact, and the pup almost immediately burst out from it, staring back at us with its huge black eyes. With the long, 600mm lens on my camera, it felt like I was practically sitting next to the pair of them. After that, I realised it had been several hours since I had first arrived, and that I was now very hungry – I just had to hope that the snack van was still open...
“THE GREY SEALS APPEARED TO BE DREAMING AS THEY SLEPT, THEIR FLIPPERS FLAPPING AS IF THEY WERE SWIMMING.”