Walrus spotted on North Ronaldsay

Walrus spotted on Orkney beach

March 2013. Hundreds of years ago, in a few quiet corners of Scotland, the locals used to hunt walrus for their ivory. However, they over did it, and walrus disappeared from Scotland probably around 1000 BC. 

However on Sunday March 3rd, a walrus was spotted near the North Ronaldsay Bird Observatory in the Orkney Islands, causing quite a stir. The walrus appears to be a young male, and is quite possibly the same animal that was seen in the Faroe Islands recently. (This is a real sighting, unlike the Polar bear spotted on Mull on April 1st a couple of years ago.)

The animal is a long way from his current normal range in the Arctic, and the current nearest known populations occur in Greenland and the north coast of Norway.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MARK WARREN/
NORTH RONALDSAY BIRD OBSERVATORY

A spokesman from the NRBO said "We don't know much about Walruses and it could be unwell due to its approachability, but it does however appear to us to be a healthy animal and is presumably fairly tame having never encountered humans before?"

Walrus sightings in Orkney & Shetland
There is one previous Orkney record (in 1984) and about a dozen from Shetland.

Male walrus can grow up to 3.5 metres long and weigh as much as 2 tonnes. Females are smaller, and both sexes grow tusks as they get older. The can live for up to 40 years and their diet mostly consists of bivalve molluscs though they have been know to eat seas birds and even to scavenge on carcasses or even to attack seals.

More about the North Ronaldsay Bird Observatory 

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/walrus-scotland.html