Sealing the deal: watching a cow teaching her pup

I’VE lived in the midlands for over 20 years now but once I spent a lot of time on the coast. This means that a return to the seaside is nostalgic and exciting.

It happened last week on a fishing trip on the Moy estuary. The fishing was slow but this didn’t matter because I was enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of the marine environment. I particularly enjoyed the many close encounters with seals.

These were ‘rón beag’, the small species that the English call common seals and the Americans harbour seals. Both names are used in Ireland. The Irish language name is a good one. These seals seldom exceed 100 kilos in weight while a beach-master bull of our other breeding species, the Atlantic grey seal, is normally over 300.