Flamborough Head - Birds

Birds

Seabirds such as Northern Gannets and Atlantic Puffins breed abundantly on the cliffs, and nearby Bempton Cliffs has an RSPB reserve. The shooting of seabirds at Flamborough Head was condemned by Professor Alfred Newton in his 1868 speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Local MP Christopher Sykes introduced the Sea Birds Preservation Act 1869, the first Act to protect wild birds in the United Kingdom.

Because it projects into the sea, Flamborough Head attracts many migrant birds in autumn, and also has a key point for observing passing seabirds. When the wind is in the east, many birders watch for seabirds from below the lighthouse, or later in the autumn comb the hedges and valleys for landbird migrants. Flamborough Head also has a bird observatory.

Read more about this topic:  Flamborough Head

Famous quotes containing the word birds:

    The air deals blows: surely too hard, too often?
    No: it is bent on bringing summer down.
    Dead leaves desert in thousands, outwards, upwards,
    Numerous as birds; but the birds fly away....
    Philip Larkin (1922–1986)

    Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior—bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper—it’s possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother’s impending visit.
    Mary Arrigo (20th century)

    When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.
    Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)