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 arable fields between Ley Hill and Latimer have been harvested over the last couple of days. This morning I saw a group of yellowhammers in the middle of the road by a field gate. From the look of things they were eating spilled grain. Instead of flying into the hedgerow they flew away from me along the road at windscreen height. I haven't seen much else recently apart from a distant glimpse of a partridge and the occasional red kite.
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