Member-only story
Peering at Puffins
Spectacular seabird photography on the Yorkshire coast
Who doesn’t love puffins?
The small seabirds with brightly coloured beaks are a favourite among wildlife lovers. From their photogenic looks to their clumsy, waddling gait, there’s just something endearing about them.
Sadly, for those who want more puffins in their lives, these auks (not to be confused with orcs — although few people are likely to) spend most of their lives out at sea, only coming ashore to breed in the summer.
Puffins prefer to nest on coastal cliffs, either on the mainland or various islands, as this helps keep their offspring safe from all but the nimblest land predators. (I’m yet to see a fox abseiling down a cliff face).
Back when I was living in eastern England, there were no nesting sites near me, so I set aside a few days in early summer for a trip up to the Yorkshire coast, at a spot called Bempton Cliffs.
Bempton Cliffs is a famous UK birdwatching site, and for good reason — in summer, it comes alive with seabirds: not just puffins, but gannets, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, and fulmars, to name a few.
There’s even a lone albatross that got blown off course and stuck in the ‘wrong’ hemisphere! Albie the black-browed albatross hails from the South Atlantic, but has lived around the Baltic Sea since 2014, making the odd trip across the North Sea to Bempton for reasons best known to him.
Sadly, I didn’t spot Albie, but there was plenty of other action to keep me entertained.
Smelly Seabirds
Arriving in the early morning, the first thing that I noticed was the noise. Half a million seabirds congregate on the chalk cliffs, and they’re not shy about letting you know it. Piercing squawks rang out as these birds bickered amongst themselves.
The next thing to assail my senses was the smell, which wafted in on the breeze long before I’d made it to the cliff edge.
It’s hard to describe the intense odour of fishy bird feces on such a large scale, but rest…
