UK Nature and Environment

A visit to a seabird colony in summer is an assault on the senses. First there’s the noise, then the overwhelming ammonia smell that stains the memory, and then the swirl of colour and activity on the white-washed cliffs.

When you’re standing hundreds of metres above the crashing sea, there can be hundreds or thousands of breeding seabirds in the air or on the sea below, or precariously perched on poorly made nests or ridiculously narrow ledges.

In these seabird cities you can spot tender moments, like an auk delicately turning its single egg for incubation while another feeds its oversized youngster. Brutality is never far either: a chick snatched to feed a bigger brood, an incoming parent robbed of its hard-won fish supper by a piratical gull, a dead bird bobbing face down on the sea.

All life is here in the seabird colony, and the British Isles is particularly rich.