Sutherland coast there are always a few Grey Seals to be found at all seasons.
Mr. Houston of Kintradwell, who has shot many, tells me they were formerly very
abundant, breeding on the sandy beaches far in the rocky caverns where man
could seldom reach them. Now, however, they are much scarcer.
After the most careful inquiries I cannot ascertain that the Grey Seal is
residential in any locality between Golspie and the Fame Islands in England;
but I have discovered that there is in winter a most distinct annual southern
migration of these Seals down the east coast of Scotland, from Wick , to the
Firth of Tay, and a return migration in the spring. Apparently the adults do
not come so far south as the immatures, for large grypus have only once or
twice been seen in the estuary of the Tay, and, so far as I am aware, never have
been killed there, while half-grown Grey Seals are frequent among the large
numbers of mtultna which haunt this Firth and are seen at all seasons.;, Mr.
James McNicol, who shoots Seals in the Tay estuary on behalf of the Salmon
Commissioners, has only once seen an exceptionally large Seal. He killed a finely
marked immature male, 6 ft. i in., above Dundee bridge in June 1901, and I
identified the skin as that of the Grey Seal. Large Seals have been seen
travelling southwards along the Sutherland coast after the breeding season, but
they probably keep well out to sea during the winter months, and approach the
Sutherland coast again in April. Here many large Grey Seals have been shot by
that good old sportsman Mr. Houston and his keeper, generally in the months of
May and June,1 after which they become scarce, only the regular residents being
seen. About June they are sometimes seen off Wick by the men in the herring
fleet, and I have seen a photograph of a fine big male shot by a coastguardsman
near that place. A few of these Seals always stop about Dunnet Head, and
certainly a few are permanent about the Pentland Skerries. In the Orkneys and
Shetlands I have visited nearly every known resort of the Grey Seal arid have
been at some labour to collect information as to their distribution in these
northern isles.
First as to the Orkneys. Mr. Charles Akroyd, who has spent many seasons
fishing from his yacht in these waters and knows Seals well, tells me that year
after year he has seen a pair of old and very large grypus frequenting a certain
cave in South Ronaldshay. The west face of Hoy is the first coastline frequented by
the species; there are always a good number breeding in its rocky caverns. During
the exceptionally severe winter of 1894 the carcases of over twenty big Grey Seals
1 The Grey Seals lie up regularly at this season on certain rocks on the Sutherland coast, notably Lothbeg Point.
were washed ashore after the January gales, and the same thing occurred in the
winter of 1889-1890, proving that even the breaker-loving grypus cannot stand a
series of gales which force them on to an ironbound coast and cause a scarcity
of food. All through the more sheltered parts of the inner islands and the east
side of Orkney the Grey Seal is only noticed as an occasional straggler, but
there are always a few immatures frequenting the inner skerries of Damsey,
Enghallow, the Ting, and the Kalk. My old friend Mr. Sidney Steel killed a fine
young male 6 feet in length on Damsey in August 1899; he also found a dead
adult male lying on the same island. In a letter to me, written in August 1899,
describing his hunt after Seals he says: ‘ The next day as it was.blowing a gale
I took the rifle and had a walk along the shore by Costa Head. Then I really
believed about the Great Grey Seals. I saw a beast in the surf as big as a cow,
but in such a hopeless position that I did not fire at him . . . On my last day
sailing home from Gairsay I looked ahead with my glasses and saw what
I thought was an upturned boat. My steersman said it was a dead whale, but
when we came near I saw to my surprise that it was an immense Seal as big as
a walrus. It was much larger than the specimen we saw in the Natural History
Museum. I measured it as well as I could, and it was as nearly as possible 12 feet
to the end of the flippers. Unfortunately its head was destroyed. The coat that
was dry above water was the colour of a silver grey rabbit and about an inch
long, but the whole was in a rotten condition and impossible to preserve.’
Mr. P. D. Malloch who accompanied Mr. Steel also shot a young female
(figured) on Enghallow in the same month, and saw a big male. Yet adult males
and females are distinctly rare in these more sheltered waters, for Mr. Alfred Leask
of Kirkwall, who has hunted Seals for years in the East Orkneys, told me that he
had never shot a mature Grey Seal..
Messrs Harvie-Brown and Buckley, writing1 in 1891, think that the Grey
Seals breed in Sanday. Without doubt they did so in former times, but I could
obtain no information that they had done so within recent years. The late
Mr. Harvey used regularly to shoot Grey Seals there, but his measurements both
of this Seal and of P. minima, as quoted tentatively by the above-mentioned
authors, are quite inaccurate. At present the best known home of the Grey Seal
in the Orkneys is the Seal Skerry, lying off the north end of the island of
North Ronaldshay, where they are strictly preserved by the owner of the
island, Mr. Traill.
1 A Fauna o f the Orkney Islands.
VOL. I. N N