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After completing a butterfly-recording transect I arrived at the beach. My usual tradition is to go down to the water and wet my hands. Just as I was doing so on this occasion a young Grey Seal popped its head out of the water only a few feet from the shore. This one was about the size of a golden retriever, but bulls have been known to reach 12 ft in length. They also possess massive bear-like claws.
My family are one of the many in Ireland, Scotland, Norway and Sweden, (Denmark and Iceland too, I think) who are said to be descended from seals. This was a common tradition among seafaring peoples. My family name, Connolly, means "hound of the tide". According to the legend a cow seal once fell in love with a fisherman. She came ashore and removed her seal skin, revealing a beautiful woman. She hid the skin under some rocks. She must have been pretty good looking, or else the fisherman wasn't of particularly discriminating tastes, because when she appeared naked at his home he very quickly made her his wife. He obviously hadn't heard her latin name: Halichoerus grypus - hooked nose sea-pig.
She bore him a family, but grew lonely for the sea, and eventually returned. There are further complications in some of the tales, but most explain that this is the reason why seals come in close to shore to watch humans, like the seal-woman returning to see her human children as they grew up on shore. I guess this one must be a distant cousin.
Today was a photo walk with Mandy-Tony and Paul Mandy Willard
We parked at Hooe Church and then walked to Cooden Beach and back the weather was fine and the gentle breeze kept us cool. We managed mostly to keep to the intended route the Dragonflies were amazing and so lots of images of them we also saw a few seals a swimmer and landscapes and lots of hay bales. There was also a view down the railway line and a helicopter passed overhead. So another really really good walk with lots of images
They are like seals. Dab them in ink and stamp them on paper to see the lovely patterns. This man was selling them outside the Thiruninravur temple.
The grey seal (Halichoerus grypus, meaning "hooked-nosed sea pig")
In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the grey seal breeds in several colonies on and around the coasts. Notably large colonies are at Donna Nook (Lincolnshire)
The name is supposedly to be that of a ship called 'The Donna', part of the Spanish Armada, which sank off the Nook (a small headland) in 1588.
APHIS’ Animal Care program regulates sea lions (Eumetopias Jubatus) and other marine mammals that are exhibited to the public.
On one of the smaller constituents of the Pentland Skerries group, appropriately named Little Skerry. Not sure what ship - the only mention I can find of a shipwreck on these islets is of the Kiruna, which was lost in 1915. This vessel looks much more recent than that, though. A website called sealdietscotland.co.uk has an account of a visit by intrepid seal-poo collectors; I must get out more.
Update from Ian Cowe - she was the Ben Barvis, trawler from Aberdeen lost 1964. Thanks Ian.
Sealed with the tines of a fork, they almost look like I wanted them to. The ones with white stuff inside are, I think, spinach-ricotta. The browner ones are mushroom.
All of our work and photos of ice seals are conducted under permits
(782-1676 and 782-1765) in concordance with the Marine Mammal Protection
Act.