It was a cold and overcast morning as I set off for the long drive to the Lincolnshire coastline to see the grey seal colony reserve at Donna Nook. It is a couple of years since my last visit and was quite looking forward to visiting today. It is a reasonably straightforward journey from home and after driving through several light rain showers I arrived at the reserve’s car park around 10.00am. The smell of the bacon sandwiches and warm tea was very tempting as I made my way past the portable catering kitchen on to the reserve. It is always a bit tricky walking round with a hot cup of tea in your hand a sandwich in the other and some expensive kit hanging around your neck, so I reluctantly decided to get the photographing done first!

I was pleasantly surprised at the numbers of seals  and pups visible as I made my way the short distance from the car park through the dunes to the ‘water’s edge’, especially considering the first seals only arrived here to have their pups on the 25^th October some three weeks ago. According to the warden’s regular weekly update - today there were some 362 Bulls, 1,254 cows and 872 pups on the reserve. This figure tends to increase through to the end of November and steadily decreases through December. It was pleasing to hear from one of the wardens that ‘Ropeneck’ had returned over the weekend and was due to give birth anytime now. ‘Ropeneck’ is the only named seal on the colony, she was given that name by the wardens when she turned up at Donna Nook in the year 2000 with a length of rope wrapped around her neck. The team carefully removed the rope and treated the affected area, scar tissue can still be seen on her today. Fortunately, since 2000 she has returned almost every year and given birth to around 18 pups.

I was pleased I had wrapped up warm with the winter gear on this morning as the wind coming off the North Sea was bitingly cold and quite unpleasant at times.

The seals, especially the young pups were completely oblivious to the number of visitors walking along the shoreline, the wildlife trust have carefully erected a double fence line to safeguard the pups and prevent members of the public from walking amongst them.  Mothers with pups can be very protective and male bulls can be aggressive. Seals are large predators and very powerful, I watched several bulls fighting today and was surprised how fast they can move on land and how vicious they were towards each other, their teeth making a nasty bloody gash on its opponents’ body. There was plenty of seals and pups to see today though and some within touching distance of the fence.

Another distraction whilst filming the seals was on the adjoining firing range, the Ministry of Defence still maintains part of the area as a bombing and target range and today whilst I was there the ‘Atlas A400 C1’ were flying overhead doing circuits of the bombing range and overflying the perimeter of the seal colony. The airbus A400 Atlas is a big four engine turbo prop military transport aircraft and spent a good hour of so doing circuits over land and over the river too.

After a couple of hours watching and photographing the seals and military aircraft I made my way back to the car park for a hot cup of tea and wonderful pork sandwich before the journey home.