RSPB Bempton and Flamborough Cliffs Nature Reserve

From towering sea cliffs swarming with seabirds to submerged chalk reefs and kelp forests, there’s a journey of discovery around Flamborough’s unique headland.

Travelling southeast along the coast path from the fossil-filled beach at Filey, the imposing 400ft white cliffs that line Flamborough’s northern coast loom overhead, and with them the full sensory experience of “England’s largest seabird city”, overwhelms the senses.

RSPB Bempton and Flamborough Cliffs Nature Reserve provide refuge to over half a million seabirds from spring through to autumn, with gannets, kittiwakes and puffins gathering in their thousands to mate, build nests and raise their young on the perilous precipices.

Sunset from Bempton Cliffs viewing platform.Image: Ivan Nethercoat, RSPB Precarious as this landscape may seem, these cliffs would be clear-cut winners on ‘a place by the sea: avian special’! Steep layers of chalk and harder rock form attractive nesting ledges for the seabirds, while miles of plankton-rich waters that well-up along the ‘Flamborough-front’ sustain important fish stocks of sand eel, capelin, cod, haddock, whiting and pollock. Nearby, Europe’s largest submerged chalk reef, extending 6km offshore, is a rich source of marine wildlife and a key nursery habitat for young fish such as cod.

The cliffs have always been renowned for their seabird colonies, with gangs of daring Victorian locals (‘climmers’) scrambling down ropes to collect kittiwake and auk eggs from the ledges. The RSPB purchased Bempton in 1969 and have since worked tirelessly to ensure that it remains a safe haven for seabirds. Today it is one of the largest, most consistent monitoring schemes in the UK, with scientists replacing climmers on ropes to mark, ring, and fit birds with tags.

I caught up with Ivan Nethercoat from the RSPB, to chat about the site’s biodiversity highlights.

A members of the RSPB climbing team makes his initial descent down the cliff face with the sunrise over the sea behind during of Northern Gannet GPS tagging at Bempton Cliffs Nature Reserve. Image: Sam Turley ‘Bempton is England’s only mainland colony of gannets, and last year we recorded 15,794 pairs, a staggering increase from 21 pairs initially recorded in 1969” Ivan says.

‘This steep rise in numbers is also mirrored in the guillemots and razorbills populations’.

Bempton is also home to largest population of kittiwakes in the UK, a colony that has benefitted, alongside other birds, cod and whales, from a boost in food resources in recent years since the closure of the commercial sand eel fishery.

‘Kittiwake and gannet populations are starting to recover from the impacts of bird flu,’ says Ivan. ‘Interestingly we are seeing an increase in gannets with completely black eyes, which researchers say are birds that have recovered from the disease’.

Barn own flying above wildflower meadows at Bempton. Image: Ivan Nethercoat, RSPB Ivan chats about some of the reserve’s more unusual visitors, typically migrant birds blown off-course. ‘Flamborough Head is often the first port of landing for migratory birds from the continent’, he explains.

‘Short-eared owls join our resident barn owls in the autumn to hunt the clifftop grasslands. Last year a pale-legged leaf warbler from China rested up in the car park woodland, specifically planted to provide a refuge for birds travelling across the North Sea. We also had a red-eyed vireo, a migratory American songbird, which is highly unusual on Britain’s east coast as Atlantic travellers typically land in the west’.

Some of the reserves visitors really have lost their bearings. ‘We even had a resident albatross between 2020 and 2023’ says Ivan, and initially I’m convinced he’s pulling my leg.

‘No, really, “Alby” started landing with the gannets right near one of the viewpoints’ laughs Ivan. ‘The gannets, being territorial, weren’t too happy, but Alby seemed to enjoy their company, and the gannets gradually came to tolerate the large bird’.

Alby the albatross flying with a gannet off Bempton (RSPB) Escaping Bempton’s cacophonous clifftops, a songbird-accompanied stroll through chalk grassland brings us to the neighbouring reserve of Flamborough Cliffs, where, according to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s (YWT) regional manager David Craven, you are more likely to encounter a broader range of seabird, including auks (guillemots, puffin and razorbill), fulmar, and kittiwake, beyond the gannet-dominated ledges. The chalk grasslands along this section of coastline are also designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), protected due to the number of specialist plants, included orchids and clump-forming grasses, that create important nesting habitats for skylark and meadow pipits. Highland cattle graze the grasslands at certain times of year to maintain the height of the sward, leaving clumps of vegetation for nesting birds.

Spectacular sea views reward the intrepid traveller around each clifftop corner, with endless prospects for observing the headland’s bounty. ‘We are seeing an increase in bottlenose dolphins out from the headland, once a rare sight, with sometimes as many as 25 in a pod, says Ivan. Baleen whales, particularly Minke, are also common visitors during the summer, as well as the occasional tuna, humpback and even orca.

‘Often you will see lots of gannets and kittiwakes diving around one particular spot and all at once a huge black shape will appear driving up the fish from below,’ explains Ivan.

A gannet gathers food. Image: Ivan Nethercoat RSPB Upon reaching the headland’s lighthouse, an opportunity arises to descend the cliff down steep steps to catch a glimpse of the grey seal colonies as they haul-out on the rocks, and to explore some of the headland’s magnificent barnacle-encrusted caves at low tide, once rumoured to have been used by smugglers to stash contraband French spirits and tobacco.

Rounding the peninsula, a pleasant hike alongside hedge-lined fields leads to the neighbouring local nature reserves of South Landing and Dane’s Dyke, two peaceful woodland oases owned by East Riding of Yorkshire Council, in an otherwise open arable landscape. These wooded ravines are alive with the songs of wren, blue tit, chaffinch, blackcap, chiffchaff and great-spotted woodpeckers throughout the seasons, and form critical resting-up sites through winter for continental migrants, including blackbirds and robins visiting from Scandinavia. Bullfinches thrive in woodland edges lining the arable fields of Dane’s Dyke, enjoying a varied seasonal diet of spring buds, invertebrates and seeds.

Our journey concludes at Dane’s Dyke rockpool-adjourned shoreline, a low-tide wonderland rich in barnacles, limpets, dog whelks, periwinkles, anemones and crabs. If we linger a while as the day draws to a close, we might admire the sunset aerial display of the noctule bats as they hunt for cockchafer beetles from their treetop roosts, and contemplate the abundance of life that thrives around this tiny promontory; amongst the clifftop colonies of seabirds diving to join dolphins, porpoise and whale in plundering the North sea’s bountiful supplies, amidst the wildflower-filled clifftop grasslands, and within the wooded ravines that lie hidden behind the crustacean-bejewelled shoreline. Flamborough Head, a coastal gem within the wider Flamborough and Filey Coast Special Protected Area, truly is Yorkshire’s own sealife Shangri-La.

rspb.org.uk

King Charles III Coast Path around Flamborough Head ERYC/ Edith Denton