Razorbills amongst the cliff top grass

Visited the seabird colonies on Yorkshire’s east coast again this summer. What you’ll commonly find with the various auks, gulls and Gannets here is one particular species that stands out as the most cooperative and often fun to photograph, being quite showy and providing lots of interesting behaviour. Razorbill pairs often like flying up onto the ledges, sometimes right at the very top slightly mixed in with the grass.

On this trip the weather was mostly overcast or slightly diffused light, which is perfect conditions that allow shooting throughout the whole day. Now finding the Razorbills isn’t difficult in Bempton cliffs and the wider Flamborough head area, but there’s a few spots that were particularly good at attracting them in fairly decent numbers at close range, it was just a case of walking alongside the cliff until some heads start to peak over.

There was a pair of Razorbills that were bonding after returning from a fishing trip offshore. Some bill tapping, revealing the yellow gape and preening each other (which is generally not so common behaviour at all with the majority of bird species, so quite nice to see).

However the most interesting behaviour was watching them appear to share a gift in the form of a little stone, by gently picking it up and passing it to its mate. It seemed fond of the stone it had, even after dropping it a few times it would still pick it up again and try to pass it on.

Framing images amongst the vegetation and ledges is great in these overcast conditions as high key shots along with the foreground framing of the green vegetation compliments each other quite well.

In some cases smaller in the frame images worked nicely too. There was a group some distance away but they were nicely isolated and just had to wait until one of them stretched its wings so to add some additional behaviour to the shot.

Witnessing quiet and sometimes unnoticed behaviour like this is fascinating and I always feel grateful when wildlife allows me into their world. The seabird colonies can be chaotic and hundreds of birds can go by at each moment making it hard to single out moments like this, but enough time spent with individual birds can be greatly rewarding.