Northumberland Coast

Just come back from a couple of days on the Northumberland coast, which was windy, cold but indescribably beautiful.

Cullernose point.......

.......with its breeding colony of  kittiwakes and fulmars, which also has .....



.... sea spleenwort fern growing is fissures beside the seabirds' nests.

Gorse, between Craster and Dunstanburgh flowering more profusely than I can ever remember and, appropriately, providing a perch for this ....

















... stonechat (??)

Primroses by the sea near Craster

Sea pink Armeria maritima blooming in a rock crevice at Cullernose point

The other common name for sea pink is thrift, a virtue that it was used to symbolise on the old pre-decimalisation brass threepenny pieces.. 

Scurvy grass flowering on the wall of Craster harbour

Knotted wrack Ascophyllum nodosum on the intertidal rocks at Low Newton, along with ....

... channelled wrack Pelvetia canaliculata growing around a rock pool

A Day on the Durham coast

Some plants and animals from a day walking on the cliffs between Seaham and Hawthorn Dene on the Durham coast last week





















Dozens of fully grown drinker moth caterpillars on the steps leading down to Blast beach ...






















..... some had even made it all the way down to the beach

Masses of bird'sfoot trefoil in full bloom on the edge of the limestone quarry

Bloody cranesbill coming into bloom on he magnesian limestone grassland

Wonderful display of buttercups in the meadows at Hawthorn Dene

Not many early purple orchids, but some nice specimens

Some glorious displays of hawthorn near Hawthorn Dene. Best year for hawthorn blossom that I can remember

Common milkwort around the quarry area

There's not a lot of sea pink along this coastline but in full bloom























A goldfinch that seemed to be ill and was reluctant to fly, but with no visible signs of injury

.... and finally, fulmars soaring along the cliffs

Foul-mouthed Fulmars

Thursday's Guardian Country Diary is about the fulmars that nest on the magnesian limestone cliffs at Dawdon on the Durham coast. There are only a few pairs - fulmars don't nest at the high densities that some other seabirds favour. At this time of year they spend a lot of time on their nesting ledges, engaged in their chattering calls and mutual preening, strengthening pair bonds, and when they're not doing this ...

...... they just glide serenely along the cliffs. I could watch fulmars for hours - just a few shallow  beats of those long, narrow wings and then they glide effortlessly. They seemed to fly in a regular circuit, out over the sea then back inland, rising on the updraughts to skim along the top of the cliffs and then swoop down and sail past their nesting ledge. 

 If you stand still they fly past a little closer with every pass and have a good look at you, checking you out. 

This pair clearly had the best nesting ledge - a prime location with a relatively broad platform in the cliff face for their single egg, with a cavity behind and a superb view of the whole beach.

Then the peace of the afternoon was interrupted by this individual - a singleton, apparently without a mate, that had been flying circuits along the beach, passing closer to the nesting ledge with every pass until it finally decided to pay them a visit.

And that shattered the tranquillity of the afternoon. Here he is receiving a beakful of abuse from the sitting tenants, with the resident male unwilling to let the interloper within mutual preening distance of his mate.

So he left to resume gliding his solitary circuits of the beach. If you could translate what those two birds in the background were saying, it would be unrepeatable on a family blog

More fulmar pictures here

Because they can .....

Back in 2005 I spent a morning in April photographing fulmars on the cliffs south of Craster on the Northumberland coast. I've long been fascinated by these birds, with their apparently effortless gliding, using the updraft created by cliffs and onshore breezes. They'll spend hours flying around in wide circles, skimming the edge of the cliff and then turning away into a wide arc out to sea, then back to repeat the performance. 

 Why do they fly so much, to no apparent purpose, when they could just perch and survey the scenery? Maybe it's just because they can, because they are as exhilarated by flight as I am by watching them.

Their flight seems almost effortless, with shallow wingbeats followed by long, stiff-winged glides. Sometimes, as they glide past, you can see the turbulence, from air flowing over their wings, lifting and ruffling the smaller wing feathers.

Sometimes they'll fly towards a cliff, lower their legs and touch the rock, they turn and glide away again ....

... or sometimes hang in the air, almost stationary for a moment, tail feathers splayed and cocked up, legs lowered, on the verge of stalling, before turning and racing away to skim the sea surface.

Those long, narrow, high aspect ratio wings are the prototype for every glider .

I've almost convinced myself that fulmars enjoy showing off. Often, if you stand on the top of a cliff, they'll circle around and repeatedly glide past you, just a few metres away, and will turn their heads to look at you as they pass. Maybe they're as curious about me as I am about them.

For all their solitary flying, during the early part of the breeding season fulmars  indulge in a lot of vocal interaction which sounds like chuckling, when they're choosing nest sites and pair-bonding.

This kind of interaction, facing one another with gaping beaks and seemingly trying to shout each other down, is common behaviour in spring.

You can see clearly here the peculiar beak with the tubular nostril which gives the fulmar family the name 'tubenoses', and also the claw-like tip to the beak which you can also see in this photograph of a skull. 

At this time of year there is, inevitably, a feeling of regret that summer has passed but also a remembrance of all the natural events that will begin again next spring - when fulmars return to their cliff edge nest sites.

Fulmars and Gorse

We spent the afternoon on the Northumberland coast, setting out to walk from Craster (after lunch in the Jolly Fisherman) to Howick, but only made it half way before the weather turned nasty. We left the pub in bright sunshine but there were already dark clouds on the western horizon. The display of gorse along this stretch of coastline at the moment is stunning – it’s so bright you could get a suntan just from looking at it. Its coconut scent is wonderful, although you needed to get pretty close to appreciate it today, with a strong, blustery wind blowing its fragrance out to sea. The kittiwake colony at Cullernose point was a cacophony of birds, perched on their narrow nesting ledges, but it was the fulmars that I really wanted to photograph. If ever there was a bird that seems to exalt in its power of flight, surely it’s this one, gliding along the edge of the cliffs with scarcely a flap of its wings, effortlessly riding the updraft. They passed so close that we could see the turbulence over their wings ruffling their feathers; too close most of the time, whizzing past so fast that nine out of every ten photographs were out of focus. I could watch these birds all day – but not today, because then the rain arrived - horizontal, driving rain. We were soaked by the time we got back to the car, but we'll be back.