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:
“Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.”
—William Golding (b. 1911)
“Yet this aboundant issue seem’d to me,
But hope of Orphans, and un-fathered fruite,
For sommer and his pleasures waite on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute.
Or if they sing, tis with so dull a cheere.
That leaves looke pale, dreading the winter’s neere.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“One ought not to have to care
So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
To seem to say good-by;”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)