Eyeballing a Black-browed albatross, Bempton Cliffs

Fortunately I had a job over in East Yorkshire this morning which required a very early start and meant that I was on site and working by 6:30am. The plan was, do the job and then call in at nearby Southfield Reservoir in the hope of seeing a Caspian tern which had been reported sporadically over the past few days. However things didn't quite go to plan and a few hours later I found myself on my way to Bempton Cliffs, having just received an alert that there was a black-browed albatross on the cliffs in amongst the gannet colony. I didn't need black-browed albatross for the UK having seen one on Unst, Shetland in the mid-1980's, but that was nearly 40 years ago and I just couldn't miss such a great opportunity to connect with this magnificent bird. 

I arrived at Bempton and headed for the viewing platform where it had been showing. Unfortunately it was no longer on the cliff, it was now sitting on the sea and drifting away from Bempton towards Flamborough Head. I saw it through the scope but it was very distant, so I decided to have a walk along the cliff towards Flamborough to see if I could get closer. I walked quite a way, nearly as far as Thornwick Bay, but I couldn't relocate it and eventually gave up and walked back towards Bempton.

I'd nearly reached the first viewing platform on the way back when I stopped to talk to another birder. We were lamenting the fact that it had disappeared before we had chance to get a decent look at it when suddenly he broke off and exclaimed "It's going over our heads!" as an enormous shadow passed over us! For a brief second I was eyeball to eyeball with a black-browed albatross but then it was gone. We watched as it flew along the cliffs towards the viewing platform and then circled around a couple of times allowing us breathtaking views against the cliffs of Staple Newk, before heading off over the platform and continuing north. What a view, what an incredible experience!

It all happened too fast for me to have any hope of getting a decent photo, but I console myself with the thought that the most important thing is taking in the experience, not faffing around with the camera and in all probability ending up with yet another out of focus picture. However as it flew away from us I did manage to fire off a couple of click and hope photos and got one with the bird flying towards the platform which I'm quite pleased with. The birders in the photo don't appear to have seen the albatross because they're not looking at it, in fact they're all looking in different directions with some not even looking through their binoculars. Reminds me a bit of "spot the ball" where none of the players are ever looking at the ball! When I got to the platform and spoke to the birders there they told me that the bird had just suddenly appeared in front of them and gone over their heads, and they hadn't in fact seen it circling around the cliffs.

The albatross continued north for a while but then alighted on the sea between Bempton and Filey where it spent the next 3 or 4 hours drifting further away, but I didn't hang around and by the time it showed well again, I was miles away watching a Caspian tern.

It got me thinking about how much birders experiences of the same day could differ and how misleading frame filling images on social media often are. I mean, if you were there first thing you would have had excellent views of the bird on the cliffs and would have got great photos and they are the ones that you see posted, but from about 9am to 4pm it spent most of it's time miles out sitting on the sea, in the morning closer to Flamborough Head and in the afternoon closer to Filey than Bempton. However during that seven hour period it had one fly past of the cliffs which lasted just a minute or two and which provided those lucky enough to see it with the views of a lifetime. But if you were looking the other way when it flew past or if you were on a section of footpath which took you away from the cliff you would have missed it and would have spent a very frustrating few hours at Bempton watching a dot float further and further away. Yet look at the images on social media and you'd think that everybody had incredible views of the bird, nobody posts a photo of the dot (except me sometimes).

I've seen eleven species of albatross worldwide and apart from Shetland I've previously seen black-browed from pelagics off Australia. Black-browed fall into the mollyhawk group of smaller albatrosses. Still pretty big, with a wingspan of 2.5m, but dwarfed by the great albatrosses which are closer to 3.5m wingspan.