Twitching a Beardy Weirdie

My name is Seth and I live on Skye. I'm very into nature and I like to blog about about what I find here on Skye. Hence the puntastic blog title: Skye's the Limit. So far so good.

However...

I'm well aware that it's been weeks and weeks and weeks since I last produced a Skye-centric blogpost. Somehow I feel as though I'm swindling you all, what with all my recent Scillies nonsense and bugger all from this glistening jewel in the crown of the Inner Hebrides (glistening coz it never stops bloody raining). Guess what - this blogpost isn't based on Skye either, though it is in Scotland at least. Please do feel free to leave your comments of outraged disgust below.

This latest episode of non-Skye shenanigans all began two days ago, late on Wednesday evening when that old troublemaker The Ghost messaged me: 

You heard that there's a Bearded Seal on the Thurso river?

Actually no, I hadn't heard any such a thing. Could this be a random wind-up, I wondered? Two minutes later and I was eye-balling this Twitter post from Dan Langlois who had noticed an 'odd' looking seal on his local river. Hmmm...not a wind-up then. I quickly thought things through. I needed some catch up sleep, I needed to buy some food to make sandwiches, I'd already promised to help a guy paint his room tomorrow. Sod it, I'd play it cool on Thursday, get some decent beauty sleep and head off bright and breezy on Friday morning. Risky, I know.

Thursday duly came and went. Friday I was on the road just five minutes late at 5.05am. I arrived in Thurso at 10am, and was parked up in a car park next to the river just five minutes later. I could see a lady scanning the river with binoculars, but she quickly spied me heading her way, jumped into her car and drove off whilst I was still only halfway across the car park. Fine, I shall find it myself.

I had a long peer in the direction she'd been scanning, seeing six Common Seals playing in the water but nothing else other than a lot of gulls, maybe thirty Mallards and a Shag. 

Over-exposed and unable to fix.

Bright gull, dark seaweed, dull light, clueless user. Not ideal. Anyway, beneath that over-exposed shimmering blob is an Iceland Gull, the first one I've self-found this winter since...er...since I found one here on Skye just yesterday! 

The tide was falling, the river was quiet, I figured I needed to have a look out to sea. What I didn't expect to find were over 20 surfers maybe 200 metres out. The waves were producing decent rollers and I soon spied a chap quite a way out on exposed rocks with a big lens pointed towards their direction. I hadn't realised it was a surfing hotspot up here. A pretty thorough bout of scanning revealed a number of Common Seals, a single bull Grey Seal, lots and lots of Wigeon, a distant raft of Eider, a few more Shags and not a lot else. Nothing resembling a Bearded Seal, that's for sure. 

Feeling pretty frustrated at potentially dipping this mega beast, I took a very slow wander back upriver and grilled absolutely everything for signs of a beard. One of the local ladies had me going for a second, as did a small terrier, but in truth it looked as though I'd be limping out of town empty handed. Bugger.

Scanning back up towards the A9 bridge, I suddenly noticed what appeared to be a seal pup hauled out on the edge of a grassy island in the river. Certainly it was pale enough for a pup, it looked small too. It was sat there all alone, no other seals were this far upstream. Suddenly it raised its head, had a look around, and shuffled back to sleep. THAT WAS IT - shit, I was almost certain! Pale head with darker markings between the eyes, it had to be! My strides quickly lengthened as I hurried along the riverside path. I could still see the seal with my naked eye, but hurried on until I was within a couple of hundred feet of it before stopping for a closer inspection. 

BEARDED SEAL - HOLY CRAP!!!!

From my closer vantage point, I could clearly see that this was the Bearded Seal. High fives, Gibster!!! Relief and happiness ran through my mind in equal measures as I stood there, soaking in the experience. By now I was a mere 200ft from the seal, which alternated between snoozing and shuffling around, almost as if trying to find a more comfortable position. It appeared overall far paler than the Common Seals in the river mouth, particularly so around the nape, face and muzzle. I was struck by the small size of the flippers, plus the brownish mark that extended between the eyes. But mostly I was struck by the long whitish whiskers, some of which were just starting to display the curled-in tips as displayed by older individuals. The part-formed whiskers and small size (I'm pretty sure it was the smallest seal I saw today) led me to believe this is a youngster, certainly less than sub-adult. Coz obviously I'm such an expert all of a sudden....

And back into snooze mode again. Note the stubby wee flippers

There were people walking along the footpath, the seal wasn't in the slightest bit bothered, so I closed the distance until I was directly opposite where it lay, a distance of maybe 150 feet with just the river separating us. I continued taking a barrage of images, holding the camera to my binoculars and hoping for the best. The 'best', as it turned out, wasn't especially good. I even managed a bit of video footage, but it's absolutely shaky as hell. As you can see (make sure you watch on 1080 HD) 

Happily the images are less sea-sickness inducing than the video. Here are a few more

It was looking really good when the sun briefly broke through!

Just look at how stumpy it is, it's ridiculously proportioned! To be fair, the image above gives the impression it has a large, bulbous head. This is not true, it just has its head hunched into the body. When it stretched its neck it was quite obvious to see that the head is actually very small in proportion to the body. So saying, it's a weirdly short, stubby beastie.

It was around this time that an elderly couple asked me if I was looking at anything of interest. Then their son and daughter-in-law rocked up and suddenly I had a captive audience, none of whom had heard of a Bearded Seal but could all see the whiskers in my photographs. Right then, the Iceland Gull decided to do a series of slow fly-bys before settling on a rock close to the Bearded Seal - how bloody amazing is that, two high Arctic wanderers reunited here in Scotland. I wonder if they recognised one another from 'home'? The son told me there had been a Ross' Gull on the river back in the 1980s, though he hadn't seen it, and that Otters occur all along the river right down into the sea itself. Seems like a very productive site, pity it's five hours away from me!

By now a fine mizzle had descended, not enough to get you wet but enough to cast a haze across further photographs of the seal. Which, by now, had decided to shuffle around some more, thus revealing its very pale underside

I have no idea how long this rare visitor will stay in Thurso River. Maybe a few more days, maybe a few more weeks. Maybe it will stay and become a permanent resident? What I do know is that I'm lucky enough to live in a part of Scotland that enjoys Tier 1 Restrictions; essentially I can do what I like if travelling alone and staying outdoors. I know a few pals down in England that would love to at least have the option of twitching this beautiful (dare I say it - cute) animal. 

Three species of seal in one locality, can't say I've ever managed that before. I sped homewards tired but happy. Until I saw this

I know this is "clean energy" but I really don't have to like it. And I don't - not one bit.