RSPB Bempton Part 1 - 22nd June 2022

Always a delight to visit this fantastic reserve in Yorkshire and also spend some time with my Sister and Brother-in-Law. A beautiful hot, sunny day with a slight breeze gave great conditions and as always it was good to watch the colony of Tree Sparrows at the reserve centre.

Lovely to see this youngster being fed!

Last year I missed the Black-browed Albatross by a couple of weeks. This year it returned much earlier, but to my dismay it had flown off for a few days. Thankfully it was back so we made the long walk down past Staple Newk to try and see it. The volunteers were great and pointed us in the right direction. It was below the viewpoint but you had to walk quite a way past and look back.

Apologies as I can only offer record shots as it stayed put all the time we were there.

Corn Buntings were calling and showed distantly and this Pied Wagtail showed well.

For the rest of part one of the blog I will concentrate on the Auks, starting with the Guillemots which nest on the steepest part of the 300ft cliffs. They seemed to be outnumbered this year by Razorbill.

The Razorbills were higher up the cliff offering some good opportunities for shots, but capturing them in flight was more difficult.

This one had had a good fishing trip!

And finally, the people's favourite - Puffin! Not always a great place to get good views, but a few showed well on the cliffs.

They are relatively small birds so flight shots are difficult, but I managed a few as they flew back to the cliff.

Well, that's the end of part 1, but lots more to come in Part 2 from a brilliant day!