Under the cliffs of the Great Orme

The seabird colonies on the Great Orme are not as awe inspiring as many other places around the coast of the UK, but they are still impressive non-the-less. Today I sat myself down in my favourite quiet place on the edge of a cliff and spent an hour or so immersing myself in the sights and sounds of this wonderful place. 

There's plenty of activity at the moment. Most obvious are the kittiwakes, they are scattered across the water and their calls fill the air, one of the most beautiful of all of the gulls. Guillemots and razorbills fly to and from the cliffs with whirring wings, while fulmars are quite the opposite and glide past without a flap. Out at sea gannets are passing by now and I find their plunge diving as impressive today as it was when I saw my first in Gairloch Bay in Wester Ross, way back in the early 1980s.

The highlight today though was a recent colonist of the Orme, the black guillemot. There were about 10 of these birds under the cliffs today. For much of the time they sat singularly on the sea or in pairs, but occasionally they would all join together. At such times birds would fly around the flock excitedly or even "fly" underwater in their butterfly display. Eventually a bird succeeded in landing on the cliff and began calling, something which they almost never do on the sea.

Choughs are another recent colonist, up to 20 can be seen on the cliffs or around the farm near the summit.