During 2025 I posted some photos from a May trip to Bempton Cliffs. I also went along there on 19 and 23 June 2025 and these are some photos from those visits. I have separated them by subject not by date. I will, no doubt, be making more trips there this year.
The header image is a view from RSPB Bempton Cliffs looking South.
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Gannets, their chicks, & Puffins
These are the ones of what I consider to be the stars of the show. The Gannets and Puffins.
The Gannets are unmistakable. With their size, colour, shape, noise and behaviour they couldn’t be anything else. Quite a few large fluffy chicks could be seen.
A lots of the nests had visible blue patches of rope and one of the birds looked as though it had blue rope trapped on its wings.
Most of the Gannets that were flying around were the solid black and white of adults but there were still plenty of immature birds of various ages showing the different levels of black – from almost solid black to just a few black keys on the trailing edges of their wings.
The Puffins are just cute. It took me a while of looking out over the water to get my eye in to recognise them flying. They are quite small but when looking from the tops of the cliffs size is difficult to judge. The Puffins perhaps were beating their wings faster and shallower than the Guillemots and Razorbill but after a while it was possible to see small patches of white just behind their wings. Unfortunately they weren’t landing anywhere near me.
Razorbills, Guillemots, Kittiwakes, Fulmar & Herring Gull
There are quite definitely separate areas for the different birds to nest/roast. Lines of Guillemots, Razorbills, and Kittiwakes on the ledges. A bit different to the whole areas occupied by the Gannet.
I had assumed that the extreme taper of the eggs of birds that nest like this was to stop them rolling off the ledge but I have heard that research has shown that the shape is to stop them getting too cold, I am not convinced. If the eggs were more spherical they would be impossible to keep on the ledges.
Would anyone like to tell me what the fish is that the Guillemot is eating? Is it a Herring?
Kittiwakes look smart and Fulmars generally look OK but I don’t like the look of their tube noses on top of their beaks.
The Others
These are the other things spotted on the visits.
- Swallows nesting on the visitor centre
- Linnet
- Reed Bunting
- Whitethroat
- Tree Sparrows
- Sedge Warbler belting out its song
- Pied Wagtail
- Burnet Moth
- Large Skipper
- Scorpionfly
- Goat’s Beard
- Weasel
- Microlight
- City of Rotterdam, capacity for 2000 vehicles
- Yorkshire Belle pleasure cruiser
- Leading lines in the wheat – leading over the hill
- Grasses
- Orchids
Track
The squiggles show where I wandered taking the photos. I only recorded tracks on part of the visit of the 23.
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The images are published under the Creative Commons, BY-NC-SA license. Feel free to share them, edit them, but please keep my name in the credits. And if I have got the ID of anything wrong please let me know, I don’t consider myself an expert but I have write something. It is often a best guess and it would take up too much room to say It could be this, or it could be… or perhaps.
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