A
seal is thought to have swum more than 50 miles (80km) along a flooded river to
an RSPB nature reserve, where it was filmed "hopping" into a lake.
The
marine mammal was filmed in a YouTube
clip, published on Sunday, in a lake at Fen Drayton Lakes Reserve, in
Swavesey, Cambridgeshire.
Graham
Elliott of the RSPB said it was a "surprising" but not unique
sighting.
"You
occasionally get seals in the River Ouse near St Ives but I've never known of
one here before," he said.
"The
surprising thing was to see it leaving the river and hopping over the bank,
entering the gravel pits area."
Thought
by experts to be a common seal, the footage shows the seal battling to cross a
barrier to get into a lake on the RSPB site.
The
29-year-old man who captured the footage said he initially thought he had seen
a dog when he approached the area while on a walk with a friend at about 13:45
GMT on Sunday.
The
designer, who wanted to be known as Robjn, said: "At first sight, I
thought it was a dog in trouble but as it came up for air I could see it was a
seal.
"It
was swimming up a ditch that links to the Great Ouse. In the video, it is
swimming from the ditch up into the flooded field.
"It
had a few tries at different points of climbing the bank but in the film was
the successful attempt. After that point we didn't see it again."
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