2025 Helgoland

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This trip to the North Sea island Helgoland happened between Monday January the 6th, and Sunday the 12th. Some of those pictures are in my 2026 calendar, for example in January.

The image shows a very young baby drinking milk, while the mother is watching out for trouble.

This one was taken at the panorama walkway on the second island Düne. This little seal has already passed its fur change and has taken shelter under the walkway, looking up.

This seal was photographed on Helgoland in 2025. One of the last mornings, I got up as usual to take the first boat to the Düne. However, that day, the road where all frozen and treacherous to travel on. So I decided to stay at the main Island and wait a bit. After the sun started to lighten the beach I saw this harbour seal just relaxing at the beach. It was down on the sand so I had a rather high angle, but this was not too much a problem since it was close enough to the water that it still reflected the warm sunlight. Similarly, the white crests of if the waves also started glowing during the sun rise, so I managed to get much of the golden light into the frame. The seal was looking towards the water but some times rolled a bit and look back up the stones to the town. Many people started walking past so the seal was reacting to many of them allowing me to have its face in the frame too. Grey seals are more common on Holgoland, which is why I was very happy to have found the harbour seal.

These two are grey seals and the same as in the photograph from January 2025 but shot on a different day. After feeding their young, mother seals play with their children a bit. They scratch the fur, slap them using their fins, or roll around with them. Sometimes, this looks like play and sometimes it looks more like cuddling. This is always very cute to observe and shows how much care the mothers put into their children. Interestingly they do this bonding even though a few weeks later, the babies or young seals are already able to be on their own.