Thursday 16th May 2013, Puffins & More!

Hey Everyone :)

Just a short summary ....

I visited Bempton Cliffs on Thursday 16th May 2013, I had planned on visiting on the previous Sunday but decided to leave it due to the unfavourable weather forecast! In the end I chose a weekday as I had a day off from work and I figured it would be a bit quieter and the forecast was for nice weather.

We arrived at Bempton Cliffs for about 9.30am after a 3 hour drive from the Midlands, first up was the Tree Sparrows spotted at the car park on the feeders and up on the roof of the visitor centre. A 5 minute walk down to the cliffs and it wasn't long before I had picked up Kittiwake, Guillemot & Razorbill. Next up was a distant Puffin in one of the RSPB telescopes followed by Herring Gull. A walk to the second viewing platform provided us with Gannet, Fulmar & more Puffins! Skylark was seen over the farmland along the cliffs.

After lunch we headed to the other end of the cliffs and we spent most of our time at "Staple Newk" - here we had cracking views of the Gannets below on the rock and several Puffins on the cliffs with quite a few more flying around. The sight and sound of all the birds never fails to amaze me :)

Just as we were leaving the reserve on the evening (we didn't leave until 6pm, got home about 9pm - a long day!!) we saw a Brown Hare running down the country road before darting back into one of the fields.

Out of the 8 seabirds listed on the RSPB map that was handed to us on our entrance to the reserve we saw 7, with just Shag not making an appearance.

A few photos:

A few videos:

We had a FAB day :)

Looking forward to our return trip to Skomer Island next month even more now! :)

Cheers, Rob