Francis Hickenbottom’s Nature Notes.
21st June 2010
I spent the weekend on the east coast with my family, visiting Filey and Scarborough. The weather on Saturday was wild, with strong winds driving huge waves onto Filey Brigg. The weather on Sunday, spent in Scarborough, was a lot more pleasant.
Saturday’s weather was obviously making life difficult for the birds which nest on the cliffs at Bempton and at other locations locally. I watched Gannets plunging into the sea to catch fish only a short distance from the shore, not far from the amusement arcades and cafes of Filey. There were also quite a few guillemots and razorbills floating on the water quite close to the beach.
The following morning was completely different. Filey Bay was quite calm and I was
able to catch a brief glimpse of a seal and spend time watching a group of eider
ducks. The gannets and auks had moved further out to sea but a single great-
On Sunday, as the children played on the beach, I made the watercolour picture of
the lighthouse and watched a small colony of nesting kittiwakes on the front of a
building, in the middle of the arcades and shops behind the South Beach, close to
Harry Ramsden’s fish and chip shop. Only a few metres above the heads of passing
holiday-