Sheer coincidence that we were visiting the East Riding of Yorkshire last week when the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) opened its new visitor centre at Bempton Cliffs. We approached the reserve on two walks first from North Landing on Flamborough Head where I photographed coble fishers landing and unloading their boat and then from the village of Speeton with its tiny Anglo-Saxon church (St Leonard’s and its flock of rarebreed Leicester Longwool sheep).
Bempton Cliffs plays host to England’s largest nesting colony of Northern Gannets (Sula bassana), graceful and quiet in flight and far more beautiful than their rather ugly name. The cliffs also host countless kittiwakes, razorbills, guillemots, fulmars and puffins as well as pigeons, rooks and herring gulls.