Looking for Britain's largest carnivores
With a global pandemic still eating up ninety percent of column inches and overseas travel limited, doorstep adventures have likely never been so prevalent since before the invention of the package holiday. I admit, I have always fallen for the attraction of foreign shores and regularly neglected my little corner of northern England. As a result, I decided to take a trip a little closer to home.
And so, to kick it all off I woke up, admittedly after a lie-in, threw back a black coffee, collected my camera, my most powerful zoom lens, and my tripod and jumped in the car, bound for a new town.
Ravenscar sits on the east coast, around twenty minutes south of my home in Whitby, nestled comfortably on the south side of the craggy bay it shares with the old smuggler’s haven of Robin Hood’s Bay. Fret from the sea had heaved its way up the cliffs and shrouded the town, slimming its already unassuming figure. Despite this relative lack of splendour, Ravenscar is quite famous, at least at a local level, for two reasons. One is that Victorian entrepreneurs loved the town, so much so it was billed to become one of the UKs premier seaside resorts at the turn of the 20th century. The other, and the reason for my trip, is a flat rocky outcrop stretching a few hundred metres out to sea from the base of the cliffs, the home of a sizeable common and grey seal colony. I had seen wild seals before, one at a time and rarely in both the harbour at Whitby and St Ives in Cornwall, but never like this.
After a precarious descent down the cliffside, fearing more for the wellbeing of my camera kit than my own should I fall, a rocky maze presented itself. A few other socially distant tourists had braved the descent on this grey day in hopes of seeing Britain’s largest carnivores, and we were all in luck.
LEFT: A large adult takes the high ground. © Matthew Walsh / Finding Earth
RIGHT: One of many shoreline huddles. © Matthew Walsh / Finding Earth
I estimated around fifty on the day, as I stood gawping and snapping away with the camera at the lounging seals. They had split into multiple groups scattered along the outcrop, some were diving and splashing through the break, most were enjoying a relaxing nap or chewing at their flippers on the rocks. They kept me entertained for hours as I repeatedly circled the outcrop planting my tripod, shooting away, then moving again, rinse and repeat, trying to get that perfect wildlife shot.
Simply put, I have never been so enamoured by the wildlife of this little island in the North Atlantic. Wildlife may be huge and spectacular in the South African bush or strange and scary in Australia, but it thrives here too, on a little outcrop, twenty minutes from my doorstep.
This season’s youngsters certainly weren’t camera-shy. © Matthew Walsh / Finding Earth
