Seal watching

There's a spot at Buckie where you always see seals. We've spent a while watching them there. Last time we timed it perfectly for the tide rising and covering the rocks where the seals like to sunbathe.

We watched for ages as the waves gradually swept over this seal, who was absolutely determined that he was staying on the rock.

 

He was fighting a losing battle against the waves, and eventually the rising sea won!

Pick Up Three Pieces

I've been inspired by this campaign to join in and pick up three pieces of litter when I visit a beach - even though it's technically an Orkney campaign and I no longer live in Orkney! Of course there's still a link in that I do still have a house there, but also the campaign was started by pupils at Glaitness School. I used to teach at Glaitness and did a couple of beach cleans with my P3/4 class when I was there as well, as teaching tham about the dangers posed by about marine litter. We also sponsored a dolphin.

Recently, in the school I'm in now in Aberdeenshire, my P3/4 class chose for me to sponsor a seal for them at Christmas instead of buying them small presents. They're going to be learning a lot more about the dangers of marine litter, and they are aware that some of the sponsorship money goes towards educating people about this issue. They've already asked if we can do a litter pick up - maybe the planet is in safe hands?

Anyway, I decided it would be a good idea to "pick up three" when I was at the beach yesterday. We went to Rattray Head for a walk along the beach, and although the beach looks very clean at first glance, as soon as you start looking closely you start becoming aware of just how much litter is there.

The most unusual thing we spotted was this:

We decided that, as there was a limit to how much rubbish we could carry, we would just "pick up three pieces" as the campaign suggests. In the end though, we picked up more of course. We prioritised picking up things which we reckoned could do the most damage the soonest - so we picked up a bottle which could easily get broken and cause a nasty injury, rather than the already broken pieces of glass smoothed by the action of the sea. We chose mostly plastic which had already started to harden and crack, as it was beginning to break up. Each of the rubber gloves we picked up was very rigid and cracked, and would soon become many pieces of marine litter and not just one, and could therefore, we assume, damage a lot more wildlife.

The pink rope was picked up as A decided that he couldn't pick it up because it was pink, so I took it! He then carried the traffic cone all the way along the beach and over the dunes to bin it - good work, especially as it was full of sand and rather heavy. We couldn't resist picking up the welly boot and hard hat too, just to add to our wee collection, but that was all we could manage to carry easily.

At least we've done our small bit - and will keep doing so. If only everyone else does the same, what a massive difference it could make, both to the beauty and cleanliness of our beaches and to the amount of wildlife being injured or killed by marine litter.

Rather poignantly, we were just returning to the path over the dunes and back to the car park when we came across this.

I think this a real case where a picture tells a thousand words, and it made us doubly glad that we were doing our small bit to help prevent this sort of occurrence being so common.

Hopefully everyone else will do their small bit too...

Clear skies

The mirrie dancers (or merry dancers, northern lights or aurora borealis) have been quite active recently. Unfortunately the weather has conspired against getting good views of them a lot of the time, with cloudy skies and snowstorms, but Friday was a beautiful evening, albeit extremely cold, and I got some great views.

I moved around a bit taking photos, but it was so slippery with a very hard frost on top of a snowfall, that I was scared of falling and breaking my camera, so after a while I stationed myself at the door of the house.

Although it was mostly just a huge arc of colour, later in the evening there was a little more activity.

Eventually there was also some pinky colour, as well as the green, but it was fading by then, and the sky was also starting to cloud over.

Earlier it had been a beautifully clear, starry sky.

Orion over my house

Saturday morning was beautiful too - a hard frost, beautiful cloud formations, lots of seals on the skerries and eider ducks calling from the shore.

 I'm really going to miss this special spot when I move.

More seal pups

I enjoyed seeing the seal pups so much that I decided to go back again the next weekend. This time I spent over 2 hours watching them... I'm not quite sure where the time went!

The first hurdle was to get past the seal which was totally blocking the path...

This accomplished (by getting rather muddy climbing round above the path) I was able to get to the beaches again. It was interesting to see the variety of sizes of seal pups this time.

There were newborns...

... right up to pups which were getting close to 1/2 adult sized, yet were still suckling from Mum.

It was interesting as well to see how well camouflaged they were. Considering that the white fur is nature's way of camouflaging the pups in their original natural habitat of ice floes, etc. I was impressed with how well camouflaged they actually were amongst the boulders on the beach.

The colours do vary though - and the tiniest newborns are rather yellowish - and not so well camouflaged!

The adults can be very well camouflaged too - but that doesn't stop fights breaking out over their 'territory'.

Seals can be very protective if they think another seal is getting to close to their pup, even if it's only trying to head past on its way to its own pup.

Seal pups

Back in November I took my parents on a trip across the barriers to see the grey seal pups.  We had a lovely hour or so there ... though I could easily have stayed a lot longer!

There were seals and pups the whole way along the beaches.

Spring has arrived!

The weather forecast was totally wrong and we had a gorgeous day yesterday. It was actually warm enough to work in the garden wearing a t-shirt! It felt really spring-like, with the daffodils out and lambs in the fields.

We made the most of the weather and headed off with our kayaks. My first trip out this year!!!


Lots of seals....

My wrists survived it not too badly. Kye decided it was a good opportunity to test out towing techniqes, so that gave em the opportunity to do a few quick stretches on the way back into the wind - without being blown backwards and having to work twice as hard afterwards, which tends to negate the effects of the stretching!


It was still so nice after lunch that Kye headed back down to the beach to go snorkelling.


Again the seals took an interest!!


Then it was out to the garden, cutting grass, bonfire ..... and we rounded off the day with fish & chips eaten on the pier! It felt like a real holiday!

Christmas Day seals

It was such a gorgeous morning, we headed off down to the beach.

P.S. It doesn't matter how many times I arrange the photos and the spacing between them - this sortware has a mind of its own and just does its own thing no matter what I do, so I'm going to give up on trying to arrange the photos nicely on the page!