Hi to everyone.

Here follows a brief Blog of our day trip to RAF Donna Nook's Bombing range in Lincolnshire.....

It's mid November and the grey seal pup count is in the high hundreds...... just short of the thousand mark!

We have stayed locally overnight to enable us to be "on-site" quite early. In fact we are the third or fourth car in the car park.  £5:00 for the day, which I think is very reasonable, especially as 20% goes to the "Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, to which everyone residing in Lincolnshire should be contributing to!!!

Just follow the very clear signs to the parking field. I would say that it's approx 100 yards from the parking field, over the dunes to get to see these remarkable seals and their pups. It is over some low dunes, so it presents an access problem for the disabled, although only a small one.

There is another carpark available for "disabled" visitors, which is only a matter of yards to the "viewing fields"!

Unusually, it was a sunny day, although we had a couple of showers early on in the day, just to remind us not to get over-confident in our expectations, weather wise.

There were a couple of hundred male Bulls, according to the local count.  The vast majority were cows and pups.... but every now and again, a bull would enter the scene. Very easy to identify as they are massive and very ugly, as the following three images testify.

The cows however tend to be a lot more appealing. Probably weighing around a third less than the Bulls, much more sleek than the Bulls and a lot kinder on the eye than the Bulls!

When the cows are ready to give birth they haul out onto the marshes and dunes to have their pup.

When first born, the pups are a very creamy white. As the days/weeks pass they tend to darken considerably, and eventually greying off. The mothers feed the young high fat milk several times a day. However, they only feed them for 18 days before leaving them to fend for themselves, eventually entering the sea for their first fish meal.

The pups can move around a little but seldom stray far from their mums. However, the "units" (mother and pup) like their space and sometimes two Cows will clash if one comes a little too close to their pup.

Generally though, things seem to be very laid back with mother and pup, spending quite a few hours a day dozing.

Leaving plenty of time for us photographers plenty of time to get some good images, hopefully! So here you go.... a couple of dozen shots of the little darlings!!!

There was a bit of a flap on today as we had an unexpected visitor, a "Pomarine Skua" See image below. They Breed in the northern Tundra regions of Europe and North America. In winter they can occasionally show up on our eastern shores. This shot was from about 70 yards away but its acceptable as a record shot...

Definitely plan to visit next year, so we have forward planned it in the diary...