Spotting Seabirds Along the UK Coast

Timing Your Walk to the Breeding Season

Britain's seabird cliffs are at their busiest between April and late July, when hundreds of thousands of birds crowd onto ledges to nest, mate and raise a single chick. Arrive too early and you will find empty rock; arrive too late and the puffins in particular will already be heading out to sea for the winter.

As a rough guide, gannets begin settling on cliffs and islands from February and stay well into September. Kittiwakes return in March and are noisiest through June. Puffins are the briefest visitors: they come ashore in late March or April and often disappear by the first week of August, with the best viewing from May to mid-July. Early morning is calmest and quietest, and the low evening light catches birds beautifully against the cliff face.

Gannets: The Big White Birds You Cannot Miss

The northern gannet is the largest seabird you will see around the UK coast, with a wingspan of almost two metres. Adults are brilliant white with black wingtips, a creamy-yellow head and a subtle buff wash down the neck. They look almost too heavy to fly, but that is part of the pleasure: watch one fold its wings and plunge from thirty metres up, hitting the water like a thrown spear.

Look for them offshore, travelling in loose lines just above the wave tops, or wheeling in great spirals over a feeding flock. Identification is straightforward once you know the shape: long, narrow, pointed wings, stiff unhurried wingbeats, and a heavy dagger of a bill. The great colonies sit on remote islands and headlands around Scotland, Yorkshire's chalk cliffs and the Welsh islands, but feeding birds range widely, so any headland with a decent onshore breeze is worth a scan.

Puffins: Small, Fast and Easy to Overlook

At around 28 centimetres, the Atlantic puffin is barely bigger than a pigeon, and its whirring flight is quick enough to miss entirely. In summer the bill is a bright banded triangle of orange, blue-grey and yellow, the legs are orange, and the face is a neat pale mask with a dark eye. By late summer the bill dulls and the face darkens, so the birds look far drabber.

Check three places when you are looking for puffins:

• Grassy slopes above the cliff, where they dig burrows and stand about at the entrance, often in loose groups.
• Rafts on the sea, bobbing in tight flotillas below the colony, particularly in the hour after dawn.
• The air itself, where they return with bills crammed with sand eels, flying low and fast straight into the colony.

Binoculars transform puffin watching. With them you will see the head-shaking and bill-tapping that pair-bonding birds perform outside the burrow.

Kittiwakes: The Voice of the Cliffs

You will usually hear kittiwakes before you see them. Their call, a throaty kitti-wake, gives them their name, and a colony in full voice is one of the great sounds of the British coast. They are small, neat gulls with a soft grey back, white head and body, black legs, a yellow bill and a dark eye.

Unlike most gulls, kittiwakes nest almost exclusively on the narrowest ledges of sheer cliffs, building a cup of mud and grass glued to the rock. Look for them stacked in tiers on vertical faces, and for the pale, fluffy chicks sitting tight on ledges that look impossibly small. They feed out at sea, so a telescope aimed at a distant cliff can pull the whole colony into view.

Cliff Etiquette: Watching Without Disturbing

Seabirds are protected by law, and disturbance during the breeding season can cost a colony its chicks. The good news is that careful watching is easy.

• Keep your distance from the edge. A few metres back is safer for you and less alarming for the birds. Never sit directly above a nesting ledge.
• Watch for the alarm response. If birds start calling loudly, standing up, or taking off in a wave, you are too close. Retreat calmly and slowly.
• Keep dogs on a short lead anywhere near cliffs between March and August.
• Leave the drone at home. Drones cause real distress and are banned on many reserves.
• Stay on the path, close gates behind you, and never handle birds, eggs, feathers or nests.

Binoculars and a telescope let you enjoy every detail without a single bird noticing you.

Getting the Best From Your Walk

Pack binoculars, waterproofs that will not flap in the wind, sturdy boots and plenty of water. Onshore winds push feeding birds close to shore, so a breezy day on the right headland is often better than a still one. Check the tide before you set out, as some cliff paths and viewing points are cut off at high water, and take a moment to sit quietly once you reach a colony. After ten minutes the birds stop reacting to you altogether, and the cliff becomes the extraordinary, noisy, busy place it really is.