Bull Seal Vs Gannet

On the remote Mull of Kintyre, a remarkable skirmish between bird and beast captivates Jim and leaves him pondering his own roots

- Jim Crumley

THE end of the end of the Mull of Kintyre coughed up a bull grey seal. You can visit the lighthouse and the Chinook crash cairn or you can wander away off piste on a long downhill diagonal to where I could engage properly with the Atlantic.

A bull seal is a mighty cough, a brute mass of equipoise, 600 pounds of blubber wondrously slung beneath a head the size of Ailsa Craig, enough chins to summon the image of a ploughed hillside. All this was held perfectly still, perfectly erect, without visible effort, a cork gripped by the meniscus of the ocean.

The beast stood in a vertical pose, muzzle bluntly aimed at the sky, eyes shut, a pose that assisted the idea of a living, breathing definition of the word "shapelessness". At intervals of several minutes the muzzle would lower heavily, chins rippling to the realignment of their burden.

Then the black pool of his shore-facing eye unveiled itself, a hypnotic moment. In the instant of opening, the black orb appeared to pin me to the rock, for I was a new shape in its perspective of the shore - something to be scrutinised, assessed, disdained, discarded. Close eye, up periscope, but slowly, very slowly.

Each time the eye opened, it was as if the seal's first task was to pin me down again, as if I was an itch to be scratched. It was not difficult for the eye to find me again for neither it nor I had moved since the last time.

Occasionally the open-eyed head would swivel, the seal's gaze would take in Ireland, or Gigha up the coast, or Islay loitering beyond Gigha. Then the eyes would close again and the muzzle would rise...

Mischief arrived in the shape of a gannet, a sublime guise for mischief. It seemed hell-bent on muscling in on the seal's portion of the Atlantic, all slim planes and points and hard edges, a hunter with attitude.