Dead Sperm Whale

Last week a sperm whale took a wrong turn into the North Sea instead of the Atlantic, unfortunately it died on our coast. It was washed up at a place called Beadnell, Northumberland. For some of the forum members this may not be so unusual, however it caused quite a lot of interest in our area. When I arrived it had been dead for about three days and you could smell the whale before you could see it. I have included the images not because they are particularly good pictures, or to be sensationalist, more because it was a newsworthy event and I had to share it with someone. You will notice that the jaw has been removed, this was to prevent people stealing the teeth.
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Seems a bit silly that taking teeth from a dead animal could be considered stealing, especially as the Whale was no ones property in the first place, though no doubt the local council lay claim as its on their beach

Joking aside its a sad event when something like this happens (the whale dying, not the teeth stealing) I've seen a few dead seals washed up occasionally but nothing like this, spotted one when we were up there last year, at first I thought it was someone in a hoodie sat on the beach, then we got a bit nearer and got a whiff of the corpse.

According to the local news it actually belongs to the Queen.

I thought she just owned Swans

Is that not just in Uppingham.

Well done getting these pictures Graham. It was certainly a newsy event in the North East.
david
PS: How do you link your Photobucket pictures to your entry in the Forum?

If this works you copy and paste the info from Photobucket's "Direct link" into the link url of your post. link

Generally speaking the foreshore (the ground between the mean Low and High Water marks) belongs to the Crown, and anything washed up likewise.

One thing I could not portray in these pictures is the smell, my walking boots are currently banished to the shed due to the blubber I inadvertently stepped on. The jaw bone had to be removed because the ivory is worth quite a lot on the black market, that was the excuse given when I asked the official guarding the queens possession. Apparently they had too ask the queen if she wanted the whale before disposing of it, maybe she likes the idea of blubber burgers.

Re the swans, I think that is just mute swans on the river Thames, currently watched over by Christopher Miles Perrins with the grand title of Warden of the swans. Unless someone would like to correct me on that.

Brian is spot on regarding the linking function in photobucket these images were linked in from Flickr, you can do the same by selecting "share this" from the top right hand side of the image, then selecting the url from the "Grab the link" section.

Graham

You'll like this:

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That's a great article it had my wife in stitches, she is a part time conductor and composer who greatly admires Mr Maxwell Davis.