In my last gannet post the bird I showed was quite far off so here’s another one which alighted on the cliff just 10m or so from where I stood.
Sizing me up to decide whether I posed any threat
And it quickly reached the conclusion that this shivering piece of humanity obviously would pose no threat whatsoever and landed close by on the cliff:
I think this is a particularly elegant touch down for such a big bird, avoiding injury whilst landing on a tiny piece of cliff in very strong winds.
It wasn’t at all bothered by my presence or the whirring of the shutter, and in the absence of any other predators up on the cliffs, now that the ‘climmers‘ are no more, this chap didn’t see me as a potential danger.
Climmers were men who’s job was to harvest seabird eggs from the cliffs by abseiling over the edge. I found this remarkable piece of film at the Yorkshire Film Archive of climmers doing their work. It’s absolutely not for the feint hearted!
As well as the climmers the Victorian passion for shooting anything and everything wild was shockingly indulged on the 18 miles of cliffs between Bempton and Scarborough. Boat loads of day trippers would set sail and shoot hundreds of birds every day, and in a book of 1838 entitled ‘Essays on Natural History’ by one Charles Waterton he estimated that between April and August 108,000 birds were shot. I don’t know if the shot birds were eaten, but the slaughter was primarily for ‘sport’ (!), and the feathers were also used in huge numbers in the millinery trade.
As a result the ‘Association for the Protection of Sea-Birds’ (APSB) was founded in 1868 in Bridlington by local naturalists including the vicar of Bridlington in an attempt to prevent the annual carnage taking place just a few miles away on their local cliffs.
Then in June 1869 protection of the birds was enshrined in law with the passing of the ‘Sea Birds Preservation Act’. This provided protection for 35 species by introducing a closed season between April 1st and August 1st, and apparently the first successful prosecution under the Act took place in Bridlington on 10 July 1869 after a Mr Tasker, of Sheffield, had shot 28 birds. He was fined a total of £3 19s!
And the result of the dedication of those Victorian naturalists, pioneers at a time when animal welfare was very low on the political agenda, is the multitudes of birdlife to be seen on the cliffs today. Hats off to those splendid folk!
The Naturephile 