Shades of grey

THE first grey-seal pup of winter has been born at Orford Ness in Suffolk, marking the fourth year of successful breeding at the site; the species first arrived there, post pandemic, in 2021, and now numbers some 400 adults.

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From 1913 to the 1980s, the Ministry of Defence owned Orford Ness, the largest shingle spit in Europe, and carried out top-secret military radar experiments there through two World Wars and the Cold War. Now a nature reserve and in the care of the National Trust, buildings from the spit’s past add an air of mystery, such as nucleartesting pagodas, the Bomb Ballistics Building and a transmitting station that once housed something codenamed Cobra Mist and is now home to Radio Caroline. A remote and fragile habitat for ne