Drone footage provides bird's eye view of seal birth

Sarah Dalrymple, reserves officer at the nature reserve, described what happened: “Yesterday our marine trainees set off the drone as normal to do our fortnightly count of seals. The drone flies very high, to avoid disturbing the seals and other wildlife, and during the flight, we can only track the images on our mobile phone so couldn’t see much.

"It took several images over about five minutes and when we got back to the office and zoomed into them, we realised that one of the seals had actually been giving birth while the drone was flying above, which was very exciting.”

Last year was the first time that seals pups were recorded on the island, with two being verified. Yesterday’s birth has brought the total this year to five seal pups and as the breeding season is not yet over, staff at the Trust are hopeful there will be more.

Sarah added: “This is wonderfully encouraging news, showing that seals are thriving on Walney Island and establishing us as north-west England’s only grey seal breeding colony.”

Cumbria Wildlife Trust started using a drone to survey seals at South Walney Nature Reserve in September, having been given permission from Natural England.

You can see the seals and pups close up by watching the Trust’s new sealcam: www.cumbriawildlifetrust.org.uk/wildlife/seal-cam

Due to the young age of the seals, they are incredibly vulnerable to disturbance. This would cause the mothers to abandon them and the pups to starve. For this reason, there is strictly no access to the area of the nature reserve where the seal pups are, and so it is not possible to view the pups at South Walney Nature Reserve. However you can see the rest of the seals playing and fishing in the water at high tide, along with thousands of wintering wildfowl and wader birds, from hides elsewhere on the nature reserve.