Category: Coast

Seabird Cities

ledges

Guillemot
Guillemot

Quarter of a million seabirds nest at Bempton Cliffs RSPB reserve. Each species has a preference for a particular niche on the cliff.

The ledges are bedding planes in the chalk. Vertical joints break the cliff face up into blocky units. In my photograph (above) the block that the herring gull is nesting on looks as if it’s well on its way to becoming detached from the cliff face.

There’s an eye-wateringly stiff breeze this morning so this is a challenging place to try out my new telephoto lens. Although I’ve mounted the camera on a monopod/walking pole it’s still getting buffeted around so I leave the image stabilisation switched on.

Razorbills
Razorbills

Puffins

puffinsPuffins are  the stars of the show at the reserve but one of the wardens is having difficulty pointing them out as they keep flying off.

I get a distant view of a pair checking out a crevice at the top of the cliff. At Bempton puffins nest in crevices rather than in rabbit burrows.

puffin

Razorbills

razorbill

razorbillsAlso near the top of the cliff, this razorbill’s mate looks as if it too is considering nesting in a crevice but you’re more likely to see them nesting on the smaller upper ledges.

In an adaptation to nesting on cliff ledges, the razorbill’s egg is tapered at one end so that, if knocked, it will roll in a tight circle. The chicks are born with an innate fear of heights, so they don’t stray too near the edge.

razorbill with egg

Guillemots

guillemots

At Bempton the guillemots tend lower down the cliff, sometimes getting together in nesting colonies on the larger ledges.

Kittiwakes

kittiwakes

Kittiwakes can make use of the smallest ledges, building up a nest with seaweed and grass.

Gannets

gannetsgannetsI just miss the perfect photo opportunity: six or seven gannets have landed on the cliff top to gather beak-fulls of grass; they’re just  yards away from a group of birdwatchers but by the time I’ve set up my camera they’ve all flown off again.

Link: RSPB Bempton Cliffs reserve.

 

 

 

Rock Pool

rock pool

rock poolSouth Bay, Scarborough, 10.55 a.m., 75°F, 20°C in the sun but a breeze from the sea from the north north-east keeps it pleasant: At last I’ve found my way to a rock pool; I’ve never made it down to this end of South Bay at low tide before. I’m sitting on an outcrop of rock, the upper surface of which is covered in barnacles (but I’ve brought a folding foam pad, so I’m quite comfortable!). Dotted amongst them are limpets, some with small fronds of seaweed attached to the shell.

Scattered about there are winkles, some in crevices, others on exposed edges of the rock which are now in the full glare of the morning sun. The tide should cover them in the next couple of hours.

In this shallow rock pool, which is more like a rock puddle, a few tiny shrimp-like creatures occasionally dart out from beneath the channeled wrack. There’s a small tuft of reddish coralline seaweed in the middle of the pool.

Oliver’s Mount

Oliver's Mountwood pigeonWe’ve never climbed Oliver’s Mount which I sketch from Platform 3, Scarborough station. This afternoon we’ve still got brilliant sunshine with a breeze to cool you down: why are we leaving?!

grey geeseReturn journey: wood pigeons on the unused opposite platform at Seamer station; pair of geese by a farm pond, Vale of Pickering, 2 p.m..

Park Lake

gulls and tufted duckPeasholm Park, Scarborough, North Yorkshire, 12.25 p.m., 55°F, 13°C, 75% cumulus, breeze from north north-west: A pair of tufted ducks float by, ‘sleeping’ and preening.

A herring gull goes into its bathing routine: wings held out, it dips its head and spreads water over its back.

On the sunny side of the pagoda roof of the floating bandstand seventeen herring gulls are snoozing, all facing into the prevailing breeze.

High tide, North Bay, Scarborough.
High tide, North Bay, Scarborough.

Herring Gull Mating

  1. South Bay, near the lifeboat station, 3.30 p.m. (top of page, bottom right sketches): A herring gull is standing on the beach apparently just watching the world go by. It starts calling, the laughing cry that instantly conjures up a picture of a seaside town for me when I hear it in a radio play.gulls mating
  2. A   second gull flies down and the first calls at it as if in greeting, but perhaps with a degree of agitation – ‘and where have you been?!’. The second bird responds with a head nod.
  3. The pair see off a rival.
  4. There’s a mating, a successful mating, I guess. It’s the female who has been waiting on the beach.
  5. The female waggles her rear end. The male leaves first, then the female.

It reminds me of a 1980 book, The Golden Turkey Awards, featuring what were affectionately judged to be the worst ever movies. It included a close up of two sea gulls with the caption ‘One of the steamy love scenes from Jonathan Livingston Seagull.’

Bullfinches on Blossom

Church FentonDewsbury station, 9.45 a.m., 69°F, 20°C: As we wait for our train on platform 2, the south-east facing stone embankment is a sun trap this morning. A fresh looking peacock butterfly basks on the wall. large whiteOur first large whites, two of them, flutter over the blossoming shrubs. House sparrows chirrup and argue in the cover of the neatly trimmed laurel. A female blackbird disappears into a dense growth of ivy. She doesn’t seem to be plucking at berries so perhaps she has a nest hidden there. A wren sings lustily from the shrubs. peacockAbove, a grey squirrel climbs a eucalyptus, its grey green foliage contrasts with a clear, deep blue sky.

lapwingScarborough train, Church Fenton, 10.25 a.m.: The floods have subsided but some of the fields in the Vale of York are still sodden; three lapwings stand at the edge of a pool in a ploughed field. I glimpse a llama as we pass a farm.

dogs mercuryIn woodlands near Malton wood anemone is still in flower; there are pale yellow patches of primroses on the embankment; a few bluebells are starting to show and there’s lots of dogs mercury.

buzzard, Vale of Pickering

A heron stands in a marshy field; a buzzard flies over the Vale of Pickering. Cloud is building as we head to the coast.

Peasholm Park

bullfinch1.35 p.m., 45°F, 8°C, dropping cooler as it clouds over: Two bullfinches make a thorough job of nibbling the blossom buds on a small tree that overhangs the path in a quiet side valley in the woodland at Peasholm Park. I say quiet but a chaffinch sings an emphatically chirpy song, and a chiff-chaff is calling. Wood pigeon and great tit join in occasionally.

Marine Drive

redshank0416redshank4162.35 p.m., 50°F, 10°C, breeze from west north-west: A redshank sits out the high tide, perching on a boulder by the sea wall on Marine Drive, keeping its reddish bill tucked under its wing

 

Bladder Wrack

 bladder wrackWhen I picked up this piece of bladder wrack at Sandsend it looked fresh but it has dried out so much that I doubt it would plump up if I soaked it in water.

As I mention in the note, it has pairs of gas-filled bladders on either side of the midrib of the frond.

It is found in the middle of the intertidal zone on rocky shores.

Blast Furnace Slag

blast furnace slagblast furnace slagI picked up what I think is a piece of blast furnace slag from the beach at Sandsend last week. It looks a bit like a motorway chipping with the contrast of limestone fragments and black coating but the top surface is hard and pockmarked with bubbly holes, so this fragment has been subjected to intense heat.

There were ironstone workings at Sandsend.

Low Tide

Sandsend Ness, 2 p.m.
Sandsend Ness, 3 p.m.

cormorantLow tide is around midday, so we’re enjoying the two mile walk along the sand from Sandsend to Whitby. It was high time that we came to see the sea again. The waves heave and sigh; the surf swishes and fizzes.

Whitby harbour, 12.25 p.m., 59ºF, 15ºC, cool breeze from sea, hazy: A cormorant flies low over the water and out to sea via the harbour mouth.

crowA crow probes around the barnacle encrusted rocks on the west side of the harbour. Three or four redshanks fly up from the water’s edge, piping as they go.

turnstoneNearer the bridge, the herring gulls have the mud bank staked out. A turnstone does just that – turns over a stone – as we pass. In fact in the minute or so that we’re walking by it turns over four stones. When we humans are rock-pooling the advice is to carefully replace every stone we turn so as not to disrupt the habitat. The turnstone doesn’t bother with that.

Queen Scallop

Collected at South Bay, Scarborough, 17 October.
Collected at South Bay, Scarborough, 17 October.

The lower (right) valve of the queen scallop, Aequipecten opercularis, is flatter than the upper valve.

The ‘front’  or anterior ear of the hinge is always longer than the rear (posterior) ear, which in this specimen appears to have been chipped away still further. This scallop starts its life attached to the sand or gravel of the sea bed but it’s capable of swimming by flapping its shells.

Keel Worm and Barnacles

barnacles and keel worm tubesAmongst the tubes of the keel worm, Pomatoceros triqueter, there are several barnacle shells. The keel worm is an annelid worm, which catches its food by waving its tentacles. It can withdraw into its calcareous tube and protect itself by closing a trapdoor, the operculum, across the entrance.

Sea Mat

sea matDown between the ribs, centre left on this high res scan of the shell, is a small colony of sea mat, a bryozoan, which, like the keel worm, is a filter feeder.

In Search of Sea Monsters

sea monsters comicMy first attempt at putting together a comic strip using Manga Studio EX5. Still a lot to learn, but I’ve managed the basics. On a short trip to Hornsea last September, we’d taken Map Art Lab with us for some crafty inspiration and the project that we had in mind was to design our own version of the sea monsters that were drawn as decorations on maps during the age of exploration.

Common Whelk

whelkjuvenile herring gullThis common whelk shell plummeted from the sky as we sat by the harbour at Scarborough at the weekend, bouncing off Barbara’s leg then smashing into several pieces as it hit the concrete next to a stack of lobster pots. We didn’t see who dropped it but I suspect the herring gulls which were arguing amongst each other.

On the top left you can see the whelk’s siphonal canal. When it is hunting, the whelk’s siphon tube protrudes from this groove and swings from side to side as locates its prey using scent receptors.

Whelks produce a ‘purpurin’, a purple dye which is thought to immobilise their prey.

Keel worm cases encrust the exterior and some of the smooth interior of the shell.