As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Sunday, 16 June 2019

Why our rock star puffins are standing on a cliff edge


9 JUNE 2019 • 7:00AM
At Bempton Cliffs on the Yorkshire coast, thousands of seabirds cloud the skies. Dave Aitken, a warden at the RSPB reserve, likens it to a snow globe that’s been shaken up. “The way they are packed in and float around. How do they do that without bashing into each other?”
Each spring, somewhere around 84,000 guillemots, 22,000 gannets, 40,000 kittiwakes and 27,000 razorbills come to lay their eggs in the rugged limestone cliffs that rise 400ft from the North Sea.
“This is probably one of the most special wildlife spectacles in all of Britain,” says Aitken. “From the scale of it to the sheer cacophony of the seabirds. When all the chicks are hatched and all the adults, we’ve probably got half...


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