Bempton Cliffs

The cliffs at Bempton are still quite busy, but it's all about the gannets at this time of year. Apart from a few distant shags on the sea, I saw precisely one other seabird today, a single fulmar flying along the top of the cliffs. 

Still, it's great to watch the gannets with the now fully grown gugas. One day soon, the youngsters, not the parents, will decide that it's time to leave the nest and they will jump off the cliff and glide down to the sea, too heavy to properly fly. They swim around for a while unable to plunge dive for food which means that they lose weight and are then able to take wing and eventually head off to the coast of West Africa. In a couple of years they'll return as immatures and in four or five years they will breed for the first time.