All this year a Grey Seal has been seen hauled up on the beach at Weymouth.
Mostly it has been seen at the eastern end of the beach near Overcombe, but today it was at the other much busier end of the beach near the Pavilion Theatre. It had attracted quite a crowd, as you can hear on this video.
Grey Seals are quite often seen around Portland, but as far as I know this is the first one that has made Weymouth its home for any length of time.
In the next video you can see it gets fed up waiting for the tide to come in and shuffles its way a bit closer to the sea so it can swim off, much to the delight of all the onlookers.
Sammy then proceeded to swim towards a Great Northern Diver that was quietly minding its own business nearby.
Like Grey Seals, Great Northern Divers are commonly seen in this area but rarely at close quarters. This winter several of them have been feeding close inshore around Weymouth Harbour. They mostly seem to eat Shore Crabs but it is possible that this one had a caught a fish and it was this that attracted the seal's attention. The seal certainly wasn't attacking the diver, but was definitely keen to approach it closely. The diver was not so keen, giving us the rare opportunity to hear its beautiful call.