Bempton

Gannet

I thought I'd best use up one of those return ticket to anywhere on the Northern network passes as there's more coming in the post. It was going to be a nice day so I headed for Bempton.

The connection with the Sheffield train at Manchester's a bit tight but usually there isn't a problem. Today my train into Manchester was late so I missed the connection. Rather than waiting another hour I bought a single to Leeds, caught the train from there to Hull and picked up the train to Bempton I'd been aiming for in the first place.

It was a nice day and I was dressed for the cold morning I'd set out in. No matter, it wasn't uncomfortably warm and there was a nice light breeze to keep everything fresh. The rooks in the fields by the station were extremely noisy, the great tits and robins in the hedgerows made themselves known and a collared dove sang by the village pub.

Cliff Road 

The hedgerows just outside the village were stiff with house sparrows. Further down a few chaffinches and a couple of yellowhammers flitted about in the trees down a side lane. It had become a day warm enough to have red admirals sunning themselves on the footpath.

Tree sparrow 

Approaching Bempton Cliffs I could hear tree sparrows. When I arrived they were chasing each other around the telegraph poles. The Dell had been hosting a pretty collection of passage migrants last week. Today it was "just" fizzing with tree sparrows, chaffinches, blackbirds and blue tits. Many of the tree sparrows were fussing around the nest boxes in the Dell and on the visitor centre.

Tree sparrow 

Bempton Cliffs 

It was a much quieter walk down to the cliffs than on my last visit. All the auks, fulmars and kittiwakes had gone but there were plenty of gannets about and there seemed to be a passage of herring gulls all flying South. The sea was peppered with gannets, nearly all of them adults. Every so often I'd think I'd found a diver and it would be a juvenile gannet recently left the nest. It was worth the looking round anyway as a couple of common dolphins were swimming just offshore.

Gannets

Gannet

Gannets 

Gannets 

Jackdaw

I had a pleasant wander round, watching a kestrel hovering over the fields, hearing the jackdaws and crows, and wondering if I kept seeing the same three pigeons flying around and why they weren't with the crowds on the cliffs.

The view inland from the cliffs

I had another scout round the trees and bushes round the car park and the Dell. Greenfinches and goldfinches had joined the chaffinches and a mixed tit flock included some very confiding goldcrests that allowed me to take some there-was-a-warbler-there-a-moment-ago photos.

There was a goldcrest there a moment ago 

As I walked back to the station the starlings were flocking onto the chimney pots of Bempton, the rooks were calling and a chiffchaff at the station threatened to sing.

I got the train to Sheffield and thence home. Along the way I became so used to seeing pairs of roe deer in fields I almost didn't realise the figures in a field outside Driffield were a couple of red deer hinds.

Gannets
There were still a few youngsters on the cliffs.