I spent a week with some friends in Seahouses on the Northumberland coast.
There were such strong onshore winds during our visit that soil was stripped from newly sprouting corn and deposited onto the shore below. It lay on the blades of laminaria and wracks and in tidelines of soil on the upper shore. It drifted across the roads, and at times the air was full of it.
Migrants appeared on the field which now resembled a desert with miniature dune features: Wheatears, Yellow Wagtail, a Black Redstart which sang a gritty phrase from the drystone wall.
Perched on rocks, below the sandblasting wind, watching Eiders explore barnacled inlets and diving in turbid water, somehow finding a crab, a cushion star, another crab.
Beyond, crouching beyond the spray-flung waves, are the Farnes. Seemed impossible that we would make a crossing that week.
We coincided, that middle week of April, with returning Kittiwakes, whose nest colony is on the low cliffs just South of Seahouses.
At first they gathered in a bouncing group offshore, and spent increasing amounts of time coming to rocks as the tide fell to rest and preen. There were forays by some birds to the chalky nest remains, a circling dance with only a slight pause on dry land.The focus of this circling changed as the week went on, with its centre of gravity becoming more landward, and on Friday about 100 birds spent all day on their nest, quarreling with trespassers, greeting a partner, just resting quietly, circling out over the sea on a graceful, curved oval, tilted flightpath.
