LOADA BULLFINCH: Bempton Cliffs

Once upon a time I wanted to go and see me some seabirds, so I got in the car and went me to Bempton Cliffs.

Fun fact...
Did you know, despite how everyone acts, Puffins are not the only species of bird you can see at Bempton Cliffs!

There are, for example, Kittiwakes. Colonies of these gracious and handsome gulls announce their presence by calling out their own onomatopoeic names in an avian chorus of thousands, swooping in to feed their distinctive black and white downed chicks, huddled together on rocky...
"Oh look, a puffin! Look at that Mike, a puffin. I found one."

Then there's the slender and graceful guillemot; seemingly immune to gravity as a dozen of them cram together on the most shallow of ledges, or form rafts on the open sea with their young, who jump from the cliff face before they can even fly to begin their life of...
"I think I see one! I think I see one! Aww, look a puffin, isn't he cute."

And the razorbill, with that exquisite detail of white drawn around it's beak, and those flipper-like-wings that allow it to basically fly under water, the closest surviving ancestor to the greater auk, the flightless bird that once graced our shores, now extinct because of human...
"Haha! Look, that little puffin is stood on a rock. Isn't that funny."

The glorious gannet, so much bigger than you realise. These powerful birds, that can smash into the water at great speeds, raining death from above on any unsuspecting fish, have great capacity for tenderness within them as they lightly caress their young, cotton-wool chicks on the...
"That puffin just flapped its wings. Did you see that? Maureen... Maureen... Maureen... MAUREEN!!! The puffin just flapped its wings! Yeah, I found one, come and have a look. I don't care if he fell off, he can swim, we paid enough for lessons, there's a puffin over here."

I shouldn't be so down on the puffin spotters though. It just seemed a shame to me that many of the people crowded around me didn't seem to be appreciating the finer points of the many other glorious birds that, through no fault of their own, weren't puffins. Other than using them for directions I don't think I heard a single person comment on any of the other birds present. "Follow the ledge beneath those two big white birds, turn right at the seagull, keep on going until the black and white bird and then look up a bit and you'll see the puffin scratching himself."

But I should be grateful for the puffins. If they can act as ambassadors for their slightly-less-comedy-nosed-but-equally-as-magnificent colleagues, then that can only be a good thing. If one of the children dragged along by their parents to look at puffins developed an interest in birds as a result, then all credit to the puffin. I don't think it would be the kid who was throwing stones at gannets while his parents laughed at his adorable antics, or the one on her phone the whole time, or the one trying to climb over the fence next to a sheer drop while his parents argued with each other about sandwich fillings, but maybe one of the other kids.

Still, I wonder whether people would be as enamored with puffins if there were hundreds of them in every city; defecating all over people, cars and buildings alike, and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

As much as I normally ignore feral filth pigeons, seeing them here, in their natural habitat, where I can rightfully call them rock doves, it was impossible not to admire them. You have to work hard to blot out the memory of the man-made Frankenstein abominations pecking at human vomit outside the Wetherspoons, but once you've removed the feral variety from your mind you can appreciate the beauty of these true rocks doves.

However, it can also be a little depressing to see, among the purer looking birds, some of the modified varieties that human kind cooked up. On cliffs that could have once been home to the grater auk if humans hadn't have wiped them off the face of the earth, it's sad to be reminded that another bird species has been altered beyond recognition by human tampering. Perhaps if it wasn't for the feral filth pigeon, seeing this graceful species of dove that lives in the cliff face might have been as exciting as any of the other bird species at Bempton.

Due to Covid 19, strict social distancing was in place throughout the reserve. Social distancing is where you see that there is approximately a meter gap between people at one of the viewing platforms, so you wait patiently, while other people just go on ahead in front of you anyway and cram in where ever they see a gap. But, fair play to the RSPB: I was glad to see they had only opened one of their car parks in order to control numbers, and were turning people away once it was full... apart from when they turned me away. Having said that, parking a mile away in the town and walking to the reserve instead meant that I saw a good number of yellow wagtails, linnets and yellowhammers before I even arrived. (By which time there was several empty spaces in the car park anyway.)

Can't touch this. Yellowhammer time.

Once I'd had a look at the thousands of seabirds crammed on to the rocks I went off for a wonder along the trail. It was along the trail that I bumped into a few tree sparrows, which makes the first time I'd seen them in the UK. I bet puffins can't flutter-hover in one place and then gracefully land on a flower like tree sparrows can.

It was also good to see, and hear, the upward spiraling skylarks and the downward parachuting meadow pipits in the fields, along with white throats, sedge warblers and reed buntings. But it was the juvenile cuckoo that probably won the most coveted 'bird of the day' award (a difficult choice, considering I had added three 'lifers' to my bird list (the three auk species) but I'm trying to think objectively here.) However, before I could get closer to it for a proper look, it was scared off by a young family, probably looking for puffins.

Tree Sparrow

Juvenile Cuckoo

After glimpses of a fulmer and a peregrine on the walk back I was satisfied that I had achieved what I had come here to do, so it was time to start making a move home. However, now that the crowds had gone and most of the viewing platforms were empty, there was only one thing I had to do before I left...