Spotted! Elephant seal giving birth, California
Driving the Pacific Coast Highway took us past the elephant seal colony at San Simeon, where hundreds of elephant seals beach themselves for about a month each December/January. On a sunny New Years Day, we visited the beach and wandered up and down the boardwalk observing these interesting creatures.
I spotted:
– A calf giving birth to an elephant seal pup. Wow, what a rare sight. A lady who had been there for an hour pointed out this calf that was about to give birth and was having contractions. Sure enough, as I watched she continued the contractions and then pop! Out came a small, dark baby seal. The gulls went berserk, fighting over the placenta that they gobbled down like a pack of, well seagulls. Then the mother and pup make these sounds to bond with each other.
– The large, unattractive males with their proboscis noses honking and shuffling around the sand. They stay on the beach for about a month, losing half of their body weight in that time.
– Tiny, dark baby seals cuddling up to their mothers and suckling on their teats. The mothers constantly throw sand on themselves, possibly to keep the heat at bay.
– Another fine west coast sunset. Glorious!
– And then a mile down the road a field of zebras. Zebras! In California. Sure why not…
