Why the Cliffs Come Alive in Spring

By the middle of March the great seabird cities of the British coast are already filling up. Guillemots are the early arrivals, often back on their ledges in February and early March, chattering to each other in that odd, growling way that sounds like a distant crowd. Razorbills follow close behind, and then the puffins — usually from late March in the far west and south-west, and well into mid-April along the North Sea coast.

That gives you a window of roughly April to late June when everything is present at once. By August the puffins will have gone back out to sea, so if they are the ones you are after, don't leave it too late. Weather matters more than most people expect. A run of westerly gales can keep birds off the cliffs for days, so if you have the flexibility, wait for a settled, bright morning after the wind has dropped.

Reading the Ledge: Where Each Bird Nests

A cliff face is a complicated address book, and each species has its own preferred shelf. Learning to read the rock is half of the trick, especially when you are looking from a footpath or a boat.

• Guillemots take the thinnest, most exposed ledges, packed shoulder to shoulder in dense ranks. They will use shelves you would swear could not hold a hen's egg, and they will use the tops of sea stacks too.
• Razorbills want slightly wider, more sheltered spots, often lower down or tucked into crevices and gullies, and never in such tight colonies.
• Puffins do not nest on the cliff face at all. They dig burrows in turf-topped slopes above the cliffs, on islands free of rats and ground predators. To find a puffin you look up at the grass, not down at the rock.
• Kittiwakes build muddy nests on the narrowest of ledges, often the most vertiginous, and their constant "kitti-wake" calls are usually the first thing you hear at the cliff edge.

If you are at a viewpoint with a big guillemot colony, look for the pale, pointed ends of eggs on the birds' feet. Guillemots incubate a single egg balanced on top of their feet, tucked under a fold of belly feather, and the egg's pear shape means it rolls in a circle rather than off the ledge.

Puffin or Guillemot? A Field Guide to Bills and Posture

From a distance, both birds are black above and white below, and a first-time visitor can easily lump them together. Go by the bill, then the posture, then the flight.

• Atlantic puffin: a triangular, brightly striped bill — orange, blue-grey and yellow — that looks far too big for the head. Orange legs and feet. It stands upright like a small, tidy penguin on the ground, and flies with rapid, whirring wingbeats, usually low over the water in a straight line. In spring, adults return with bills already glowing.
• Common guillemot: a slim, pointed, dark bill with no markings. Chocolate-brown above, white below, with a long, straight, upright stance on the ledge. In northern colonies, up to a quarter of birds are the "bridled" form, with a fine white ring round the eye and a white line running back from it.
• Razorbill: black, blunt and chunky, with a bold white vertical stripe near the tip. Lower to the ground than a guillemot, shorter tail, and with a distinct, almost comical habit of pointing its bill skyward.

Calls and Character: What You Hear Before You See

The sound of a seabird colony arrives long before the birds do, and it is worth learning a few voices. Guillemots make a deep, growling purr — often written as a long drawn-out "arrrr" — which rolls around the rock in waves. Puffins are far quieter at the colony, giving a low, throaty purr rather like a contented bee, though at sea they are mostly silent. Razorbills produce a gruff, short croak. Kittiwakes, as the name suggests, call their own name, endlessly.

Timing habits differ too. Puffins often raft on the sea in the early morning, then come ashore in bursts, dashing from the air straight into a burrow to avoid gulls. Guillemots are on the ledge all day, but activity peaks in the first few hours after dawn and again in the evening.

Binoculars, Distance and Cliff Craft

You do not need fancy optics, but you do need 8x42 or 10x42 binoculars — waterproof, ideally — because most of the birds will be 40 to 200 metres away. A spotting scope helps for reading colour rings on guillemot legs, but a decent pair of binoculars and a steady hand will do for most of the pleasure.

Dress for the weather rather than the forecast, and treat the cliff edge with real respect. Spring cliffs are often wet, crumbling and undercut, and grass at the edge of a puffin colony can conceal burrows. Stay on marked paths, keep back from the lip, check tide times if you plan to walk below the cliffs, and remember that onshore wind and sea mist can arrive within minutes.

Watching Well on Nesting Cliffs

These cliffs are among the most heavily protected wildlife sites in Britain, and disturbance in spring can cost a pair its season. Keep a respectful distance — at least 50 metres from any nesting ledge, and never walk into puffin burrow areas. Keep dogs on a short lead, or better still leave them at home. Avoid flushing birds by approaching too quickly, and if a line of guillemots suddenly leaps from the rock, you have got too close; step back and let them settle.

From boat trips, ask the skipper to hold off the colony rather than run close for photographs. The best views are almost always from a fixed viewpoint or a slow, distant drift — a puffin seen through binoculars on its own doorstep, bill full of sand eels, beats any close-up that sends the whole ledge into the sea.