Readers’ wildlife photos

Today’s photos come from Neil Dawe, who sent them with a note: “My wife and I spent three weeks in the UK travelling over 1500 miles this past spring/summer spending most of our time in smaller villages and towns but we did manage to visit a few areas specifically for wildlife, and the Bempton Cliffs was one of those.”  Neil’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. 

Reader’s Wildlife Photos by Neil K Dawe, Vancouver Island, BC

Bempton Cliffs

This past May my wife and I had the opportunity to visit the Bempton Cliffs in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, an important part of the Flamborough and Filey Coast Special Protected Area (SPA). It is a spectacular site—a true wonder of the avian world—known especially for its over 300,000 seabirds that arrive there to nest each spring.

I had visited these chalk cliffs some 50 years ago and recall few other people there and my ability to, perhaps foolishly, crawl to the cliff edge for photographs. On our recent visit, we were two of an estimated 5,000 visitors walking the clifftop paths and viewing birds from the safe, now well-fenced viewpoints dotted along the cliff edge.

The Bempton Cliffs run about 10 km (6 miles) from Flamborough Head north and, in spots, are over 100 m (330 feet) high. In this first photo (a), the sea arch and cliffs at Staple Newk are visible. The following photo (b) shows the extent of the cliffs looking to the south from about one-third of the way along the cliff trail from the north end (note the group of people at one of the observation points):

The sea arch cliffs support most of the nesting Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus) at Bempton. This is the only mainland breeding colony of gannets in England with over 15,000 occupied sites in the SPA. During my first visit, I recall watching with awe as these huge birds would plunge-dive into the North Sea from heights of over 40 m (130 ft) feeding on surface-schooling fish and squid, such as mackerel and short-finned squid (Illex illecebrosus). We saw none of that feeding behaviour this year and apparently it’s now quite a rare sight to see them foraging near the cliffs. The likely depletion of local fish stocks due to climate change and over-fishing means the gannet has to forage further away to find the shoals of fish they need:

With a wingspan of over 170 cm (67 in), the gannet is the largest seabird nesting at Bempton Cliffs.

A gannet pair with one adult tending the nest while the other takes some rest time:

A gannet arrives with nesting material to add to the nest while its mate incubates the one egg:

The Black-legged Kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla), a small pelagic gull with a wingspan just under a meter, has over 44,000 pairs nesting along the cliff ledges of the SPA. This is also the most abundant gull globally, although its numbers have declined by about 40% since the 1970s:

Black-legged Kittiwakes at the nest. Kittiwakes normally lay 1–2 eggs and both the male and female incubate. The bird on the far right had 2 eggs in the nest; one egg can just be seen in the photo:

The Guillemot (Uria aalge), known in North America as Common Murre, is the most abundant nester in the SPA with around 112,000 individuals followed by the Razorbill (Alca torda) at over 45,000 breeding individuals. Here both species are at their cliff edge nest sites, the lighter, blackish-brown plumage Guillemots and the Razorbills with the black plumage:

Guillemot pair on gently-sloping, vegetated ground. Most Guillemot nest sites are on cliff ledges and less commonly on soil or other substrates. One egg is laid and the pair share incubation duties equally:

Razorbill on a cliff edge:

Razorbill pair on their cliff ledge nest site. One egg is normally laid and, like the Guillemot, both the female and male share the incubation duties:

Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica) at Bempton Cliffs nest primarily in rock crevices, unlike most UK sites where burrows are used. They lay one egg and both adults incubate. Although there are an estimated 3,100 individuals here at the SPA, finding a puffin required searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. We did, however, find 9 individuals including this fellow:

This photo shows mainly Razorbills on their cliff face nest sites but one puffin is visible.  Can you find it?:

Here it is:

The last seabird we found at the Bempton Cliffs is a “tube-nose” species, the Northern Fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis); about 1,200 individuals have been counted at the SPA. Fulmars look much like gulls but are related to petrels and albatrosses. Their “tube-noses” are prominent tubular nostrils, and can be seen as the black area at the base of the top of the short bill on this individual. Since fulmars can spend up to 10 months on the open ocean, only coming ashore to breed, they drink seawater. They have a special gland that extracts the excess salt from their bloodstream and excretes it through these nostrils. The nostrils also enhance their sense of smell, leading them to food sources:

Northern Fulmars at their nest site under a rock ledge.

For the camera aficionados, I used a SONY RX10 iv with its Zeiss 24–600 mm zoom lens and 1”-type 20 Megapixel sensor for all the photographs.