I’m no birdwatcher (birder? twitcher? bird fan?) but I do like our feathered friends, especially those found along our coasts. I’m currently reading a wonderful book about Britain’s birds that my mummy gave me for Christmas. What a pleasure then today, to have one of my best bird moments* ever.
*Yes I know that sounds vaguely dodgy, but I can’t think of a better way to phrase it.
We got out on the water in our sea kayaks for the first time in 2008, enjoying a glorious early morning along our local Purbeck coast. No camera I’m afraid, for all sorts of reasons far too boring to explain. The old photo above shows the site of Durlston Head’s guillemot colony, with a few of these fat little birds just visible lurking in the shadows. As we passed 200m offshore of this spot today, we were delighted to see a great many guillemots crowding the ledges; they’re back for the spring!
The birds began to take off from the ledges, and as the air around us became thick with the little blighters, we realised that there were quite a lot of them. The colony numbers about 400, but we saw at least twice that number. The birds kept coming for what seemed like forever, emerging in rows from the caves behind and swarming into the air. Mingled in were many razorbills, recognisable by their distinctive ‘razor’ beak but otherwise unusually attractive in their winter plumage. These fellows are usually less numerous hereabouts, which seems to explain the biblical deluge of birds; perhaps many of them are just stopping off on their way elsewhere?
A sad footnote; two people (a walker and a climber) fell off the cliffs near this spot in separate incidents a few hours later, and both appear to have been seriously injured. We were paddling with John G from the Swanage lifeboat, who had also been called out to a climbing incident the previous night. We met the two lifeboats out on exercise on our way back, not knowing at time that they’d shortly be called to rescue the victims. Our best wishes to those involved.
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