Dunstanburgh Castle with seabird cliffs

Razorbill and sea-pinks

Dunstanburgh, Lindisfarne and Bamburgh are  castles of the Northumbrian coast. They rise on igneous rocks, an intrusion of the dolerite of the Whin Sill.
We walked south along the coast, past golfing umbrellas and flooded bunkers.  Past broad beans in flower.  Dunstanburgh Castle rose ghostly in mist and rain, Gull Crag and Rumble Churn looking dark and gloomy,  with basalt rockfall thick at the base of the cliffs.   
We entered by the main gatehouse, went out beyond the curtain wall and found a sheltered lunch spot  looking down into Queen Margaret’s Cove.

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Waves come crashing into the narrow cove and a colony of kittiwake cries  about the cliffs. ‘The largest colony of kittiwake in Northumberland,’ an information board tells.  ‘ The first occupants of Dunstanburgh Castle would have seen the same creatures and smelled the same flowers. These are as much a link to the past as the stone walls surrounding you.’ Rather more, I reckon.  The kittiwake are clamorous and wonderful.  We two are the only visitors.  Perfect solitude.  Outside the curtain wall,  a pool with kittiwake and lichen rocks.

Still raining, still shrouded in mist.  Should we go further?   ‘Let’s do it,’ I said. ‘ Who cares about rain and mist?’ We so nearly abandoned Dunstanburgh but had we known what lay ahead we would not have had a moment's hesitation. By the protective fence we would come so close to seabirds and a floral cliff that brought history and natural history  close.  Kittiwake resound about the cliff but  first came  razorbill on entablatures of columnar basalt amongst thrift.  Black  razorbill with wisps of  white feathers, the underwing and fine white facial lines leading to the eye. And thrift in warm and muted  pinks against razorbill black.  Sea-pinks dissolved in a wash of abstraction.
Two days ago we were on the Farne Islands in bright sun, a beautiful day.  We shared the sea-bird cliffs with many visitors, with school parties. Today,  no one else saw the razorbill and kittiwake of Dunstanburgh. 

We heard the waves crashing onto basalt boulders below the cliff and the shrill cries of kittiwake.  Razorbill were so close, on cliff- top basalt columns , but I could not hear them.  Listening to Tweet of the Day, the razorbill voice is  bass, harsh and rasping.  A grunting, hawking, raucous sound. 
The razorbill lays a single egg on its cliff-ledge and some three weeks after hatching the chicks will leap the cliff, encouraged by their fathers from the sea below.  These ' jumplings' cannot yet fly but they swim out to sea and their fathers stay with them until they can fend for themselves.  Razorbill and guillemot chicks have this same jumping habit.
Coming in mid- July to Pigs' Paradise on Colonsay we must have missed the jumplings by days.  I'd love to have seen them leap.

Tweet of the Day. Razorbill with Miranda Krestovnikoff for a recording of razorbill giving voice
Chicks galore! Scottish Nature Notes our work RSPB