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.

Holyhead

Shag diving for dinner

I had an embarrassment of complimentary travel vouchers burning a hole in my pocket so I used half of them for a day out to Anglesey. It's a lot late for the nesting seabirds at South Stack so I decided I'd have a proper explore of Holyhead Harbour and the breakwater.

Newton-le-Willows was a new addition to my list of railway stations what have a buzzard sitting in a tree, a chunky, earth-brown bird that glared at the train as it left the station. It was a day for seeing buzzards, there were a few more in the Cheshire countryside and yet more flying low over the fields of Anglesey.

It was a lovely day for a train ride along the North Wales coastline. The tide was high, there was just enough mud left for a few shelducks and a big flock of black-headed gulls on the coast just North of Mostyn, beyond that the waves lapped seawalls. Little egrets and herons haunted salt marshes, carrion crows, jackdaws and rooks rummaged in fields, herring gulls and woodpigeons sat on chimney pots and starlings on wireless antennae. Mute swans and little egrets peppered the big island on the marine lake at Rhyl, a crowd of little egrets clustered by the viaduct over the Clwyd.

Crossing over onto Anglesey the flocks of rooks became more frequent as the train passed through sheep farming country. A big flock of greylags grazed near Llyn Coron just after Bodorgan Station, there was a bigger one near Rhosneigr Station.

The Old Harbour 

I got off the train and wandered over the Old Harbour into Holyhead. I stopped for a look round, as well as the inevitable herring gulls and pigeons there were a couple of shags and a sleeping guillemot. Black guillemots frequent the harbour and I got my hopes up but this bird had all dark upperparts so was definitely a common guillemot. (In Summer, black guillemots are black top and bottom with big white patches on their wings, in Winter they're nearly all white with flecks of black on their backs and a broken black margin to those white wing patches.)

Instead of my usual walk across the town centre and out for South Stack I walked beside the harbour along Victoria Road. At the top of the road there's a gap by the houses looking over an inlet of the New Harbour. Herring gulls and oystercatchers dozed on rocks, a heron was asleep on an island and a couple more shags were out fishing in the water.

Rock pipit

I carried on round the road and dropped down to the promenade next to the Maritime Museum. The sea was lapping at the seawall and a rock pipit was skittering over the rocks by the seawall. One of the shags was fishing close enough to try and get its photo. Unlike the only black guillemot of the day which was out in midwater by the boats. It was in Winter whites, the first time I've seen this plumage, and at first I took it for one of the little buoys marking the harbour pathways. Then I realised what it was then convinced myself I was right first time and was only sure about it when it dived underwater and bobbed back up again fifty yards further out.

Shag 

Holyhead Mountain from the marina 

A nosy round the marina found a lot more herring gulls and a few black-headed gulls and carrion crows, and redshanks and oystercatchers dozed in pairs on the rocks. A way over I could see people walking the length of the breakwater (it's about a mile and a half long). I reckoned I could try a bit of seawatching on there so I took the path to Breakwater Road.

Along the way I took a detour. A rough path led into some woodland so I followed it, adding chiffchaffs and titmice to the day's tally. Then I got to a bit where the path had collapsed down a bank. I'd have crossed the gap in younger, dafter days but I decided not to risk it on untrustworthy knees and turned back. Along the way I spent a while trying to get a photo of an ichneumon wasp that was hunting on a bit of stone wall.

Ichneumon wasp 

The path had evidently been a private road to the castellated Victorian ruin on Breakwater Road. Parts ran along high banks thick with ivy, hart's tongue ferns and polypody. Elsewhere there were high walls thick with ivy and fizzing with insects. Commas, red admirals and speckled woods feasted on the ivy flowers, bees and hoverflies buzzed, Southern hawkers snatched small flies out of the air in passing. It felt very much like Summer.

Red admiral 

Comma

Goldfinches, great tits and robins flitted to and fro between the trees on either side of the road.

Goldfinches
When they sit still it isn't easy to pick out goldfinches from dead leaves but as they never sit still the problem doesn't arise.

A picturesque ruin

The breakwater, the New Harbour on the right, the Irish Sea on the left 

I had hoped that when I got onto the breakwater I'd get a closer look at the black guillemot and perhaps find some more but no luck in either case. In fact nearly all the birds were more distant than they had been from the marina. The seawatching was the typical combination of optimism, patience and frustration tempered by a couple of moments of triumph. Nearly all the birds I could see were gulls, mostly herring gulls with a few black-headed gulls and a couple of passing great black-backs. Just as my spirits were flagging a juvenile gannet flew by one of the great black-backs. Crows had been flying across the harbour. One flying over the sea took my eye as it looked a lot broad-winged, even more so than a rook, but I concluded it was just a trick of the angle I was seeing it by. Then it called a few times and headed off up and over to Holyhead Mountain and I added chough to the year list. How I missed a dirty long red bill I do not know.

Snowdonia from the end of thf breakwater

The New Harbour

Wheatear 

A rock pipit jumped over the seawall on my approach. A wheatear kept its nerve but also kept its distance. It was a young bird in fresh plumage and the white tips of the tail puzzled me until I worked that out.

Wheatear

I walked the length of the breakwater and walked back. An adult gannet passed by on the open sea about a quarter of a mile out. Glancing down at the path I realised that despite the island being made up of Pre-Cambrian gneisses that had been folded and compressed and partially melted under high pressure the breakwater has been dressed in fossiliferous Carboniferous limestone.

Rugose corals, possibly Lithiostrotion

The walk back to the station was uneventful except the bit where I was forcibly reminded that the roads on this end of town have some steep stretches both up and back down into the town centre. I was glad of a sit down when I got to the station.

There were yet more corvids, greylags, buzzards and woodpigeons as the stopping train to Shrewsbury made its way across Anglesey. Mute swans cruised on the Cefni at Malltraeth while a kestrel hunted along the bank. The tide had ebbed and beyond Llanfairfechan the gulls on the beach were joined by little egrets and pied wagtails.

Great Orme from the train

I changed at Llandudno Junction where a couple of dozen house sparrows settling to roost in a bush by the pedestrian bridge contrived to sound like a couple of hundred. As the train back to Manchester trundled through the twilight I was the old man with his nose pressed against the window looking for owls.

Bempton

Gannet

I thought it about time I used up one of those "Go anywhere on the Northern Rail network free" tickets that have been burning a hole in my pocket and headed out to Bempton. I cheated and bought a ticket from Oxford Road to Sheffield so I wouldn't be hanging around for fifty-seven minutes waiting for the Scarborough train and cut the travelling time to just short of four hours.

It had been overcast and decidedly cool when I set out, which together with its being a Monday that isn't a bank holiday and not half-term school holidays led me to hope it wouldn't be too busy. By the time my train arrived at Bempton it was a warm, sunny late morning.

A chiffchaff, a wren and a blackbird sang in the bushes by the station and swallows twittered on telegraph wires. As I walked into the village rooks called and whitethroats sang in the fields, chaffinches and blackcaps joined in the chorus and moorhens fussed by the village pond. The picture was completed by the swifts chasing each other round the village church.

Cliff Lane 

By the time I'd walked down Cliff Lane to Bempton Cliffs the clouds had all but disappeared and the house sparrows of the village given way to the tree sparrows of the hedgerows. Along the way the "bit of bread and butter and no cheese" song of yellowhammers had joined the chaffinches and whitethroats in the wayside trees. It was all rather pleasant.

Tree sparrow

The Dell was stiff with tree sparrows, many intent on striking picturesque poses right to the moment a camera appeared. A lot of the time trying to tell the difference between house sparrows and tree sparrows by ear is a matter of subtleties of pitch and tone. It's quite different when you get tree sparrows en masse like this, there are squeaks and trills you'll never hear from a house sparrow.

A busy watch point

The reserve was very busy, despite it being a Monday, not being a bank holiday and not being a school holiday. A quick sken round confirmed that all the watch points over the cliffs were crowded.

Along the clifftop

No matter. I've had my goes on those, I was happy to have a stroll across the meadow and drift along the cliff tops seeing whatever I might in the process. It would be impossible not to see gannets, kittiwakes and guillemots and it wouldn't be difficult to see razorbills and puffins, and nor was it. Fulmars were trickier to find away from the watch points but I saw them.

Gannet

Kittiwakes 

Kittiwakes
Living on the West coast of England it's difficult to imagine that the kittiwake is our most numerous gull. Then you go over to the East coast and it's obvious.

Razorbills

Guillemots
It's not only tufted ducks as roll over onto their backs to scratch their bellies

Gannet

Gannet

Gannets

Gannet, a three year-old bird

Gannets
I was fighting a high contrast light all day

Gannet

Gannet, a four year-old bird 

Gannet near miss

Gannet

I took a lot of photos of the rear end of gannets as they passed by or their feet as they suddenly rose and shot overhead. I'd picked the wrong venue if I wanted not to be reminded that I'd left the house smelling of cat food. The gannetry is one of the more intimate birding experiences. (I had a similar but different experience once on a boat going round Bass Rock as the gannets plunge-dived into the sea only just beyond arm's reach.)

Guillemots, razorbills and puffins (front)

The puffins were easiest to see at sea, bobbing about on the peripheries of rafts of guillemots and razorbills. They took indirect routes to their nesting burrows, rarely flying in a straight line into the cliffs, with one eye cocked for crows or gulls. A smashed guillemot's egg, the yolk oozing over the path, demonstrated the wisdom in this approach.

The view towards Flamborough

Tree sparrows bobbed in and out of the clifftop red campions. Skylarks and meadow pipits sang in the open meadow and the jackdaws were well nigh everywhere, if they weren't scuffling about in the grass they were rubbing shoulders with the crowds of pigeons on the cliffs. A reed bunting sang from the long grass at the far side of the meadow near the visitor centre and a pheasant called from God knows where. A heavy-looking small brown job bobbed up over the cliff edge long enough for me to recognise it as a rock pipit. A couple of pied wagtails were less flighty. 

Pied wagtail 

A passing barnacle goose seemed out of place.

Barnacle goose 

I saw more red admirals on the clifftops today than I've seen all year. A comma fluttered inland and lost itself in the meadow. A pair of common blues chased each other round a patch of campion. Another butterfly drifted low over the path as I walked along. At first I thought it another comma but it looked bigger, an impression reinforced by it's not having crinkly indented wings. I don't see fritillaries very often so don't have an instinctive feeling for their ID. It didn't help that it wasn't stopping to have its photo taken. By a process of elimination, despite the unhelpfulness of the modern search engine, I came to the conclusion it was a dark green fritillary (which is actually orange-brown but don't worry about it).

Tree sparrow

After one last look at the tree sparrows in the Dell I headed back down Cliff Lane, serenaded by more whitethroats, chaffinches and yellowhammers. Somewhere in a copse a couple of fields away a buzzard was begging loudly.

The view towards Bridlington 

I had half an hour to wait for the train back. A pair of swallows were busy at a nest by the station while the chiffchaff was joined by robins, wrens, blackbirds and a dunnock.  The highlight of the journey back — besides the Peak District in the golden hour — was a fine roebuck posing in a field by the line near Rawcliffe Bridge.

A long day was made the longer by a missing bus home. I got the bus to Urmston and walked back, getting a bag of chips en route. I'll sort out the photos and add them to this post tomorrow.

Bempton Cliffs