When John McFall woke up this morning there was a sleek and slippery surprise on the doorstep of his sister's Pilot Bay home.

The Te Awamutu resident holidaying in Mount Maunganui opened his door to find a seal lazing on the doormat.

A seal lazes on the front door step of a Pilot Bay home.

'I opened the front door first thing this morning and went ‘Oh'. I thought it was somebody's dog lying there.”

On second glance John realised it was not a neighbour's dog, but a juvenile seal having an early morning snooze.

He says the seal must have crossed the road, climbed the steps, travelled around the patio and stopped on a coir mat by the front door to sleep.

'It just looked up at me with these cute puppy dog eyes.

'I thought ‘You are definitely not a dog'.”

John says the seal looks happy and healthy and is definitely making for an exciting Tuesday morning.

The Department of Conservation has been called to attend to the seal.

This is the second time in the last month a seal has made an early morning visit to a Tauranga resident's home.

On August 22 Kulim Avenue residents Gerald McDonnell and his wife woke to find a seal knocking on the door of their waterfront home.

The injured seal had made its way from the harbour to the McDonnell's home with an injured flipper.

Read more about the early morning wakeup call here.

DOC Ranger Pete Huggins says seals are a frequent sight in Tauranga as their numbers increase. 'Their numbers are slowly increasing, there are lots more breeding down south and as the breeding down south increases they are coming further and further up in greater numbers,” says Pete.

'For Tauranga residents who have probably grown up around here and never seen seals, this is going to be every year, and potentially more and more, and we know they are breeding now on offshore islands from Tauranga.”

Read more about the history of seals in Tauranga here.