Mike and Tom, our sebird monitoring volunteers, sign-off for this season. And what a season it's been:
It’s hard to believe, but the seabird monitoring season is nearly over and this will be the final week at Bempton for the residential volunteer seabird monitoring team. We are down to the last few guillemot and razorbill chicks on the cliffs – monitoring plots of 50 birds that we studied for 3 hours at the start of the season (while wearing thermals, hats and gloves!) can now be checked in a few minutes, often by a single binocular sweep.
Herring gulls have started to fledge, and kittiwakes have large chicks which won’t be far behind. The auks have been the main focus of our monitoring effort so it is time for us to head for home, get some rest, remember what a weekend is and leave the remainder of this year’s monitoring to the rest of the monitoring team. We’ve had a great time and met a lot of great people and we look forward to coming back and checking ‘our’ birds again next season.
There’s still plenty to see at Bempton though – gannet chicks are getting large enough that they can be easily observed from Staple and Jubilee and young non-breeding gannets are sitting at the tops and bottoms of the cliffs in clubs.
Gannet-style parenting
If you look carefully you may spot a fulmar chick crouched in the rocks. Look out for a fluffy white/grey ball. Our fulmar regularly leave chicks unattended, but their reputation must still put off potential predators. We’ve also started to see great skua again and seawatching may reveal more exciting passage birds if weather conditions are right. There’s never a dull moment on the cliffs.
A home-alone fulmar chick