Bempton

Gannet

It's been a few days since I added anything to the year list and I've been getting itchy. Besides which I'd been promising myself another visit to Bempton and now the Sheffield to Scarborough train's back up and running I decided it was time to go. (Manchester to Bempton via Sheffield takes about half an hour longer than via Leeds but is considerably cheaper, especially if you buy tickets for Manchester - Sheffield and Sheffield - Bempton.)

The promised showers didn't materialise and the trains behaved themselves so it was a pleasant journey there and back. The me of thirty years ago would be astonished by my noticing a little egret fishing in the river by an industrial estate in Sheffield and even more so that I didn't bat an eyelid at it.

By Cliff Road 

I got off the train to Bempton and walked down to the cliffs. A couple of dozen swifts screamed and swooped about the church as I passed by and the house sparrows in the village gave way to the tree sparrows of the rural hedgerows. There wasn't the same profusion of yellowhammers in the hedgerows that there were last year but the couple that were about were in fine voice.

Almost with my first sight of the sea halfway down Cliff Road I could see gannets wheeling about. It always astonishes me how conspicuous they are, even half a mile or more away, and that their orange caps are also obvious at this distance.

Tree sparrow

I arrived at Bempton Cliffs and wandered through the meadow to the cliffs. The tree sparrows were barging around mob-handed, whitethroats sang in the hedgerows and a lesser whitethroat sang from somewhere deep in the long grass and thistles in the middle of the meadow. Young swallows were strung out along the fences and the next batch were in production in the nests on the visitor centre.Large whites, ringlets and meadow browns fluttered about with a few small tortoiseshells and peacock butterflies.

Juvenile swallow

Gannets

Of course, the most striking thing at the cliffs were the gannets. Hundreds upon hundreds of them loafing on the cliffs, wheeling about above them or flying in squadrons over the sea. And the noise reminded me why they used to be called Solan geese. There were a lot of youngsters in the nests, mostly half-grown and fluffy white. I seemed to spend a long time trying to get close-up photos of gannets as they flew by. High contrast white and black birds on a high contrast July day posed plenty of photographic challenges, my slow reactions to fast-flying birds didn't help any.

Gannets

Gannets, guillemots and kittiwakes

Gannets

Gannet

Gannets

Gannets, guillemots and can you spot the puffin?
(You'll need to tap on the picture for a closer look)

Kittiwakes and guillemots

Juvenile kittiwakes

Juvenile kittiwakes

Kittiwakes

The kittiwakes were almost as conspicuous as the gannets, there were perhaps twice as many of them and the youngsters were mostly in flying condition even if a few still had their doubts. They're such infrequent visitors to Northwest England it's difficult to imagine them as our most numerous gull until you see a colony of them.

Guillemot

The guillemots were less obvious but no less plentiful. It was harder to spot any youngsters and the ones I did see were quite big. The razorbills were dotted about the colony, always there but never numerous. For all that there were lots of puffins zipping about over the sea they were extremely difficult to spot on the cliffs and they rarely lingered.

Razorbill

Pigeon

Family parties of pigeons and jackdaws flew about the clifftops. The pigeons here are very similar to the wild rock doves although DNA analysis has shown them to have a lot of feral pigeon ancestry to them. Most of them certainly look different even to the grey chequer type of feral pigeons, almost having a stock dove look about them but with plum purple rather than blue tones to the grey. A couple of the others wouldn't have looked out of place on any street corners.

Bempton Cliffs 

I'd walked a while along the cliffs before I saw my first fulmar of the year. They were distinctly few and far between though I found a dozen of them nesting near a crowd of kittiwakes on a particularly sheer slab of cliff. I kept looking for, and not finding, any shags that were about in the crowds at the bases of the cliffs.

Guillemots

Rafts of kittiwakes and guillemots drifted about on the water in numbers that would in any other context be pretty impressive.

Bempton Cliffs 

As I walked along the cliff path, which was very busy with people, swallows hawked low over the clifftops, tree sparrows sang on the fenceposts and skylarks, reed buntings and meadow pipits sang in the fields. As I got to the barley field where the footpath goes down to the farm a corn bunting started singing on the fence further along.

I looked at the height of the grass hiding the footpath and decided against walking back via the farm, my eyes would have been an itchy mess halfway down the path.

So I turned back, which proved to be lucky as along the way I spotted a shag flying low over the waves between cliff faces.

Gannet

I was barely a hundred yards down the road on the way back when I was offered a lift to the station. My knees said thank you to the kind gentleman.

I remembered to buy some cat food on the way back home.

Did you spot the puffin?