I was in Whitby for a few days in August and noticed that there seemed to be guillemots visible from the piers which is something that I haven't noticed before. Subsequent reports such as this one suggest that this is a "bad thing" caused by a shortage of food out to sea.
I took a boat trip down the coast which was interesting and rather disturbing. Plenty of guillemots were visible on the water from just after we cleared the harbour, what was exciting was the sight of gannets travelling parallel to the coast once we were half a mile or so out to sea. We spotted a solitary seal but the highlight was a pod of bottle-nosed dolphins. The skipper took the boat in a circle around the pod which must have been disturbing for them.
The garden has seemed very quiet with hardly any birds seen but I hadn't been explicitly looking. I have just started putting a little food out in the front and in 24 hours have seen Robin, Great and Blue Tits and Magpies landing in my tiny front garden. Yesterday I heard a song that was unusual to me which the Merlin app identified as a Blackcap. Unfortunately for me the bird was ensconsed in the middle of my Forsythia which is still in full leaf and I couldn't get a sighting. This afternoon I saw Robins in the garden and corvids overhead. I set Merlin running while I swept fallen leaves from the front path. The app identified Robin, Rook, Wren, Jackdaw, Greenfinch and Blackbird. I also heard Parakeets but not while the app was running.
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