{"id":21036,"date":"2022-01-03T21:53:20","date_gmt":"2022-01-04T02:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=21036"},"modified":"2022-01-03T21:53:48","modified_gmt":"2022-01-04T02:53:48","slug":"seals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2022\/01\/03\/seals\/","title":{"rendered":"Seals At The Mouth Of The Merrimack"},"content":{"rendered":"

We headed to Salisbury Beach State Reservation<\/a> again yesterday hoping to chance upon snowy owls, but we didn’t end up much hanging out in the dunes looking for them.<\/p>\n

Instead we parked in the empty campground at the beach facing Badgers Rock at the mouth of the Merrimack River. The tide was high, overflowing the marshes, and just beginning to fall, and the water was rushing past the point full of marsh grass and branches and clumps of things that looked like maybe dirt. Sometimes the clumps were actually ducks or harbor seals, which popped their heads up here and there.<\/p>\n

\"Harbor<\/a>
Harbor seals swimming hear Badgers Rock at the mouth of the Merrimack River, just south of Salisbury Beach State Reservation, Jan. 2, 2022. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The seals faced us, seeming to watch us with their big black eyes. They\u2019d swim along for a bit, then point their noses up before sinking down into the waves and disappearing. Or maybe they\u2019d dive down and their spotted backs would crest above the water in a slippery curve.<\/p>\n

Everything was foggy and with my poor eyesight anyway everything at that distance was blurry. We\u2019d been up here a couple weeks before, on a clear day, and seen dozens of harbor seals hauled out on Badgers Rock. Today, Badgers Rock was just beginning to emerge from the tide and with the camera I was able to finally discern that what I took for rocks was a seal hauled out on top.<\/p>\n

Some seals swam around. Some leapt into the air, then splashed back into the river. More seals joined the first on the rock. Their grunts carried across the water. Or maybe it was the groaning of the channel marker against the outgoing tide?<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, (hopefully) weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2022 or the respective creators.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Harbor<\/a>
Harbor seal hauled out on Badgers Rock at the mouth of the Merrimack River, just south of Salisbury Beach State Reservation, Jan. 2, 2022. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Harbor<\/a>
Harbor seals hauled out on Badgers Rock at the mouth of the Merrimack River, just south of Salisbury Beach State Reservation, Dec. 14, 2021. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Harbor<\/a>
Harbor seals hauled out on Badgers Rock at the mouth of the Merrimack River, just south of Salisbury Beach State Reservation, Dec. 14, 2021. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Harbor<\/a>
Harbor seals hauled out on Badgers Rock at the mouth of the Merrimack River, just south of Salisbury Beach State Reservation, Dec. 14, 2021. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Harbor<\/a>
Harbor seals swimming hear Badgers Rock at the mouth of the Merrimack River, just south of Salisbury Beach State Reservation, Jan. 2, 2022. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We headed to Salisbury Beach State Reservation again yesterday hoping to chance upon snowy owls, but we didn’t end up much hanging out in the dunes looking for them. Instead we parked in the empty campground at the beach facing Badgers Rock at the mouth of the Merrimack River. The tide was high, overflowing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[614,948,949],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21036"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21036"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21044,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21036\/revisions\/21044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}