How to Identify Common Seabirds on British Cliffs

Read the Cliff Before You Read the Birds

Stand beneath a British seabird cliff in late spring and the first thing that hits you is not a bird but a wall of sound — a chattering, gargling, wailing racket that carries a mile out to sea. The second thing is the smell. Get past both and you will start to notice that the colony is not a random crowd at all. It is a carefully stratified city, and learning to read it is the fastest way to identify what you are looking at.

Start with height. The top of the cliff, and the grassy slopes just back from the edge, belong to the larger gulls and the fulmar. The sheer middle band, where the rock is cleanest and most vertical, belongs to guillemots and razorbills. The narrow, crumbling ledges of softer rock suit kittiwakes. Puffins are down among the soil and turf, in burrows. Once you know who lives where, half the identification work is done before you lift your binoculars.

Gulls: Telling Your Herring from Your Black-Backed

Gulls confuse people unnecessarily. There are only a handful you need for cliff-watching, and leg colour settles most arguments.

• Herring gull — the classic seaside gull, with a pale grey back, pink legs and a yellow bill with a red spot near the tip. Loud, confident, and quite happy to steal your sandwich.
• Lesser black-backed gull — noticeably darker grey back, yellow legs, and a more graceful, tern-like look in flight. Increasingly a rooftop nester in coastal towns.
• Great black-backed gull — the heavyweight. Genuinely black back, pink legs, heavy chest and a deep, slow wingbeat. If it looks big enough to be a small goose, it probably is one.
• Kittiwake — the small, gentle one, with black legs, a yellow bill and a soft grey back. It calls its own name in a fussy three-note cry: kitti-wake.

Young birds of all species are brown and mottled, and they take three or four years to reach adult plumage, so don't assume every scruffy gull is something rare.

The Ledge Crowd: Guillemots and Razorbills

Look at any crowded, pale ledge in the middle of the cliff face and you are almost certainly looking at guillemots. They stand upright and packed shoulder to shoulder, chocolate-brown above and white below, with a slim, pointed, dagger-like bill. They build no nest at all. Instead, each pair lays a single pear-shaped egg directly onto the bare rock, so that if it is nudged it rolls in a tight circle rather than off the edge.

Razorbills are mixed in among them in smaller numbers. They are similarly black-and-white, but chunkier, with a heavier, blunt bill marked by a thin white line near the tip. They nest in crevices and underneath boulders rather than on open ledges, and their flight is faster and more direct.

The best moment with these birds comes in late June and July. Three weeks after hatching, the chick — still only a third grown and unable to fly — launches itself off the cliff and flutters down to the sea, where the male is waiting. They then swim away together, often for hundreds of miles. Seeing it happen once is worth a whole summer of cliff-watching.

Fulmars: The Bird That Pretends to Be a Gull

Fulmars look like stocky grey gulls but are actually petrels, and their flight gives them away. They hold their wings stiff and straight, gliding on the updraught along the cliff face in long, unhurried arcs without a single flap. On the ground, look for the tube-shaped nostrils on top of the bill — that is the family trademark. They nest on narrow ledges and, if you approach a chick too closely, will spit a foul-smelling oil at you with unnerving accuracy. Give them room.

Puffins: Small, Fast and Full of Surprises

Puffins are the bird most people come for, and they are easy to identify once you know what to look for: orange legs, a black-and-white body, and in spring and summer a startling rainbow bill that has led some to call them sea parrots. In winter the colourful plates are shed, leaving a duller, greyer bill.

Out at sea, they cross the water in fast, whirring flight, low and slightly erratic — they look as though they are pedalling hard to stay up. On the cliff, they stand about in loose groups at burrow entrances, and you will often see them returning with a row of silver sand eels clamped crosswise in the bill, which they manage without dropping any.

Flight Patterns and Calls: A Quick Field Guide

• Gannet — large, brilliant white with black wingtips; folds into a spear and plunges into the sea from a great height.
• Kittiwake — light, buoyant, flapping flight; constant kitti-wake calls around the nest.
• Fulmar — stiff, straight wings, glides and shears; rarely flaps.
• Guillemot — fast, whirring wings, straight low flight; growling purr from the ledge.
• Puffin — whirring, slightly frantic flight, most often seen low over the water in small parties.
• Herring gull — long, slow, laughing cry that rises and falls.

Watching Without Disturbing

These cliffs are busy workplaces between April and July, and a moment's care goes a long way. Keep well back from the edge — crumbling chalk and loose soil give no warning — and never let a dog off the lead on the cliff top. Stay quiet near colonies, keep drones away, and use binoculars rather than your feet to get closer. Birds that are flushed from nests lose eggs to gulls and crows within minutes.

Bring a flask, dress for a wind that will change its mind three times an hour, and settle in. Seabird cliffs reward patience more than any other kind of birdwatching in Britain.