looduskalender.ee

 

Food worries. Fish is certainly not to be had in the shore waters of the seal islet, wintering ducks are rarely seen in camera view.

 

In the video at first a young bird flies past, a moment later an adult WTE with a white tail. Both birds are attracted to the place by the chance of finding embryonic membranes and placentas after the births. The WTEs get competition from both hooded crows and large gulls – herring gulls and  great black-backed gulls (the latter with a dark mantle).

 

A WTE is quite dangerous to newly born seal pups during their first few days but already from the 4th day the young and healthy world citizen is bold enough to stand up against all harassers. The eagles try to create panic among the adults around the new-borns and drive off the adults into the sea.

 

The adults that have given birth on the ice are calmer and defend themselves vigorously against the eagles. On the seal islets the number of animals is large, there is much stress and various threats and harassers are always there.

 

 

So they interact. The length of the large female seals with their mottled furs can be up to 2 ½ meters; weight under two hundred kilos (we will talk about the large seal bulls another time when there is a video story to complement). The length of the WTEs is a little less than a  metre , and while the smaller adult male bird weighs around 4 kilos, a large female can be up to a couple of kilos heavier. The powerful wings we saw in the video – wing span about 2 metres.