A grey seal rookery

And a seal pup chorus

Perhaps surprisingly, as winter approaches the grey seals of Scotland come ashore to have pups, in time for the coldest part of the year.

Initially, a photogenic furry white coat protects pups from the cold, but is not waterproof so common wisdom is that they will only swim if they have to. Then, about three weeks after birth, the coat is shed in favour of a darker more protective layer.

A grey seal pup at Inchkeith Island

They are also weaned at around that time at which point the adult females return to sea to feed, having potentially lost up to half of their body weight feeding their pup; they normally have just one per year. The females also need to contend with adult bull males lurking along the shoreline, ready to mate when the chance arises.

The pups are then left to fend for themselves and by week six most are driven to the water by hunger, where they must learn catch prey on their own.

Part of the Inchkeith Island rookery

A couple of weeks ago we saw some of this life in the raw from the comfort of the Maid of the Forth, a tour boat operated from South Queensferry in central Scotland. Our destination was Inchkeith Island, where pupping had started at the end of October and which sees about 500 pups born each year.

On arriving, the rookery was a peaceful scene with mottled grey and brown-white coated adult females and fluffy white pups scattered across the rocky shore. Occasionally a pup would approach its mother to suckle, which would sometimes give an encouraging pat of a flipper to move it in the right direction. Surprisingly, some pups were already making short forays into the water before racing back to land.

Along the shoreline, adult males would sometimes jostle for advantage with a sudden splash. These displays sometimes cause injury as mature bulls can weigh 300 kilograms or more and have a fearsome set of teeth.

An adult male showing its powerful jaws

A few others swam near the boat to see what was going on or were dozing in the water, in some cases vertically with their snouts above the surface in a behaviour called ‘bottling’.

Soon the whole cycle will begin again, but for us it was a chance to peer into a different world, if only briefly.

One huge surprise was the near-constant wailing of the pups, making a noise somewhere between that of a child crying and the stereotype of a ghost in a movie. Adult grey seals ‘sing’ too at other times of year and their sound is sometimes said to be the origin of the Hebridean selkie legend, in which males shed their skins to take human form.

With thanks to the experts on the Maid of the Forth for such an interesting tour.

Further reading

Spectacular Britain: A spotter's guide to the UK’s most amazing natural phenomena, Bloomsbury, 2024 for further insights into when and where to see grey and common (harbour) seals and their mating behaviour.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/spectacular-britain-9781844866342/