Out of all the animals on Bird Island, the furries are the ones I know best. It’s my job to work with them, but during summer they interject themselves into everyone’s lives. During the breeding season, the beach in front of base fills entirely with fighting males and pupping females, and as the season progresses the beach and base get taken over by packs of marauding puppies.
The males
Let’s start with the big fellas. Around early November time, the males start arriving ashore and establishing territories. Before the ladies arrive, the beaches become dotted with large, regularly spaced, male fur seals. The males are powerhouses of muscle, and they fight tooth and nail to defend their patch of beach. The damage they do to each other defending their territories is unbelievable. Exposed skulls aren’t unusual. The drive to reproduce is so strong that by the end of the season many males have died from injuries or pure exhaustion. The prime real estate seems to be near the water, above the tide line. The males below the waterline or near the grass tend to be smaller and have fewer girlfriends. We call these smaller males psycho-sized, as they seem to suffer from small man syndrome and are the most likely to give you a chase.
I can’t say that any of the big males are particularly friendly, but I met an odd one earlier in the year. One sunny (it happens sometimes) afternoon I was having lunch on the picnic bench out front. While I was eating, a fair sized male approached from behind. By the time I noticed he was already close and he wasn’t being in any way aggressive so I just sat (very) still. He then gave me a sniff and shuffled up beside me, before resting his enormous head on the bench next to me, and giving me puppy dog eyes. He seemed happy to rest like this for some time before lying on the ground with his head by my feet, and going to sleep. At which point I slowly and surely backed away with lunch in hand. He was in no way harmless, but he didn’t seem to have any harmful intentions. I think I was just in his favourite napping spot.
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| Top to bottom: Early territorial males await the arrival of the females, while the penguins keep them company (photo by Cian Luck). A male guards his girlfriends (photo by Cian Luck). The beach in front of base during breeding season; not even at its busiest (photo by Jess Walkup) |
The females
The females are half the size of the males but have nearly as much aggro. Around mid-November, the females start showing up on the beaches and get immediately hassled by every male they pass. If a female enters a male’s territory he tends to do everything he can to block her leaving, and they’re nothing if not persistent. Once she finds a spot she likes, or a male she can’t evade, she settles down, and within the next day or two pops out a squeaking, furry puppy.
A week later the female leaves the puppy for the first time and heads off to sea to feed. For the next few months the mum will keep this up, feeding herself at sea, then coming ashore to feed her pup. The length of time she spends at sea varies between seals and years, but 3-5 days is typical, and the first trip is the longest. Once she gets back to shore she starts screaming for her pup. These screams are shrill, loud, and often go on through the night (outside our bedroom windows). The sound they make is hard to describe, but it you’ve seen that YouTube video where someone’s dubbed a Taylor Swift song with the sound of screaming goats, those screams are close enough. Once the puppies hear their mum returning, they go nuts. We often stopped to watch reunions as the puppies shook violently with excitement, and squeaked and shouted when they reunited with mum. Early on, the mums and pups stay near the birth site, but as the season goes on the mums lead the pups further and further into the tussock grass, until you start meeting them up the hills; 100m above sea level.
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| A proud mother with her overly attached pup (photo by Cian Luck) |
The puppies
And then there are the puppies. They’re just the best. As I write this in May, the puppies (born only in December) have left. It was a sad affair to see them leave but it was a joy to watch them grow up enough to strike out on their own. When they’re first born they tend not to wander far from mum and milk, and they seem a bit lost the first time their mum goes to sea, but by the second of third trip you can find them roaming the beach, clambering up rocks, and exploring.
They’re super curious at this stage. I lay down out back to rest once and before I knew it I had a puppy clambering over me. Soon they learn to playfight and once they start they only stop to eat, sleep, and scratch. Often you can see small gangs of puppies running up and down the beach, looking for trouble. They learn to swim and within a day go from flapping about frantically, like a toddler in a paddling pool, to gliding through the water with some grace. Then it’s time to moult their puppy fur and this transformation is a funny one. A pre-moult puppy, black and fluffy, is cute. A post-moult puppy, grey and sleek, is cute. A moulting puppy is hilarious. They start to lose their long puppy hair around the eyebrows and before long most of the puppies are balding like Charles Darwin. The puppies continue to moult until they’re left only with hairy David Hasselhoff chests, and then eventually have a smooth, sleek coat of short grey fur. I could go on and on about how brilliant and adorable puppies are but pictures tell a better story.
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| Just a handful of my favourite puppy pictures. Cheers to Jerry for the pic of a moulting/balding pup (rest of the photos by Cian Luck) |
Fur seals have great personalities that become more apparent the more time you spend with them. Some of them might be a bit on the angry side but they have lots of endearing qualities too.
Things fur seals love:
- Sleeping
- Playfighting
- Scratching - they really love scratching
- Comfy beds
- Snow and ice - even better is scratching on ice
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| Fur seals doing what they love (photos by Cian Luck) |
Things fur seals don’t love
- Getting wet – Funnily enough, on rainy days you can see a steady stream of them heading for the sea, and if the ground’s wet they’ll be jostling to find a loftier space to sleep.
- Me
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| Fur seals showing their equal dislike for soggy ground and yours truly (photos by Cian Luck) |
But I’m working on this last one
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| A friendly youngster giving my gloved hand a shniff (photo by Cian Luck) |
