Migrants Way. Stage 19. Speeton to Filey

A warm, sunny day with barely any wind. I get to Reighton Sands Lane at low tide. The large expanse of sandy beach is exposed with the clear sky showing the eroding cliffs of Filey on the horizon. I descend the steep, concreted slope at Reighton Gap. Before the walk proper, I must walk towards Speeton Black Cliff, where I left it on the last stage. The massive metal boilers of the Wreck of the 'Laura' mark the walk's starting point. A woman is taking photographs of the wreck. She approaches and is very happy to explain to me the developments leading to the stranding of the steamship. A Rock Pipit sits atop some of the WW2 anti-tank blocks, nearby. Three Rooks pass overhead, first north, then south. A Stonechat feeds at the clifftop bushes.

The view from atop Reighton Sands Lane.

The wreck of The Laura

Looking towards Bempton Cliffs from Speeton Sands.

Black Cliff, Speeton.

Danish Gull

I could as well have used this ringed Black-headed Gull as a walk starting post. I first saw this individual on the last stage. This morning, it was in the same pool at low tide, within a 30-strong group of Black-headed gulls. The white plastic ring with black letters 5FY from a Danish ringing scheme is visible at long range with binoculars or from photos. I always find it exciting to find a ringed bird, especially if it is alive and in good health. It is very easy to report a ringed bird using the Euring website. I did, and quickly I got the recoveries file back from the organiser. I found out that the gull, then a three year old male, was ringed in a lake in Copenhagen, in April 2013, and since then, it has been re-sighted several times in both Speeton/Reighton Sands area and at the same place were it was initially ringed. Presumably it is breeding in Denmark, and returning in August to winter at Filey Bay. 

The Ravines of Filey Bay

The cliffs of Filey Bay are made of soft, sediments forming layers of Cretaceous and Jurassic marine clays, interglacial estuarine shell beds and glacial boulder clay on top. These deposits are cut by narrow valleys or ravines, also locally called 'gills' from Old Norse, which allow access to the beach (the 'gaps'). In contrast with the often bare lower cliff faces and the developed or arable cliff tops, the ravines are wildernesses, with scrub and trees, providing shelter and food for migrant birds. Today, the hawthorns and brambles had plenty of berries, and on the south facing slopes, insects swarmed around the bushes. In addition to the constant attrition by the sea, the clay cliffs of Filey Bay suffer from landslides or slumping as clay liquefies when wet, which can be seen as areas of less vegetation intruding onto the beach. Beware this clay can be very soft after rains or storms and become a shoe trap!

Slipway by The Gill.

The stage today started near Old Beck, near Speeton, where there is a right of way to the beach. Shortly after I pass by The Gill, where a slipway allows access from Reighton Caravan Park). People from the caravan park congregate around the slipway. Dogs chasing balls, children make sandcastles, walkers and horse riders make use of the beach. It is such a wide beach that it is easy to maintain social distance.

Getting an ultralight ready to fly.

 A Kestrel hovers near Hunmanby Gap. Here, another small ravine with a beck reaching the beach. Pillboxes on the beach. I find a dead adult gannet on the tideline with no head or legs.

 The walking is easy on the beach by the cliff, as the tideline is right at the bottom of the cliff and the sand compacted by the previous high tide. I reach another small ravine, Butcher Havem, it's beck, Flat Cliff Gill, freely flowing onto the sand. This one doesn't seem to have access, vegetation clogging it quickly near the beach. On the way back later, a Grey Wagtail has found it good for a stop during migration.

Flat Cliff Gill.

Grey Wagtail.

Another short stretch and I get to Primrose Valley. This is a much larger, wooded ravine. The beck has to be crossed with a bridge. Steps allow access to the clifftop and I take the chance for a change of scenery. The steep path cuts across the wood and scrub, and the clifftop by a golf course, is fringed by scrub and rough grass. Two Stonechat feed from the bushes. Normally Stonechat feed on the ground from a perch, but there are so many insects about that they are feeding flycatcher style. A flock of Lon-tailed Tits is feeding on a sycamore that is buzzing with insect in the midday sun.

The path then descends onto another wooded ravine where Martin's Gill runs. This borders Filey's Glen Gardens and marks the end of the stage. A hot drink and picnic lunch on Filey's promenade puts an end to the stage.

An ammonite sculpture by Martin's Gill.

Reed Bunting.

I do the same route on the way back, but I take the clifftop path between Hunmanby Gap and Reighton Sands. This offers fantastic views towards Bempton Cliffs.

Bird Observatories

Filey Bird Observatory and Group recording area starts on Speeton, with a sharp boundary between the Flamborough Bird Observatory recording area and the FBOG recording area, this shows how fantastic is this bay for migratory birds! Hunmanby Gap is a well watched visible migration site and ringing station part of the bird observatory, this is its Trekkelen site.

Featured Bird: Stonechat

Stonechats are small passerines that like to sit in prominent perches. They are common during the autumn migration, peaking in mid October, and they also winter on the Yorkshire coast. In Filey Bay they are also a breeding bird. The scrubby cliffs suits them very well. Stonechats are not considered of conservation concern, although population declines have been noted after hard winters.

Walk information

12 km circular. Start on Reighton Gap car park,  TA139762. Finish at Martin's Ravine, Filey. Public toilets at Primrose Valley, Filey Promenade. Beach access at Speeton, Reighton Gap, Hunmanby Gap and Primrose Valley. Check tides. section from Reighton Gap to Hunmanby Gap and from Primrose Valley to Filey can be walked on clifftop path.

More information

Reighton Speeton Hunmanby Gap circular walk

Migrants Way. Stage 18. Bempton to Speeton

The fog had lifted by the time I got to Bempton Cliffs, leaving a cold, but sunny day. Its 8:00 and there are no visitors in the reserve. I take the wildlife path and then join the clifftop path towards Buckton Cliffs. I don't meet anyone until Speeton Sands.

A good day for butterflies, with dozens of Small Tortoiseshells, a Common Blue, two Peacocks, a Red Admiral, two Small Copper, and several Small White and Speckled Wood seen.

Small Copper.

Painted Lady

Looking East at Bempton Cliffs, the fog lifting.

And I can't ignore the Gannets. Fully grown Gannet chicks are practicing their flight skills on the nests, and new pairs display in 'clubs'. 

A downy guga.

Guga exercising its wings.

Jackdaws.

I spot a Peregrine, powering down from Buckton Lane onto the cliffs. It circles a couple of times in front of the cliffs before disappearing from view.

Peregrine and Gannet club, with Reighton Sands in the distance.

Gannet 'club'.

Gannet.

A Kestrel hovers over the grassy clifftops ahead. Then there are two of them.

The path ascends. Buckton Cliffs are the highest in East Yorkshire, and soon I get to the trig point marking their summit at 135 m. The views towards Filey Bay are spectacular. Filey Brigg rises from the sea like the head of a narwhal.

There is a Buzzard being mobbed by crows. Then I realise there are actually four Buzzards circling and trying to get away from the crows.

Buzzards and Crows.

Looking down to Speeton Sands

The clay on the chalk marks a recent cliff fall.

The path turns right and down sharply. There is an ominous sign, but no bull or even cows to be seen.

After the field, a footpath by a ravine leads to Speeton Sands.

The ravine leading to the beach.

I have chosen today for this walk so that I would be at Speeton Sands at low tide. It is a wide, expansive beach at low tide, but there is practically no beach at high tide.

There is a large bench where to contemplate the beach before taking the steep steps down to the beach, which have been repaired recently. The last stretch of path must have got eroded by the sea, but I find my way down across the clay.

Speeton Clay

The clay forming Black Cliffs is from the Lower Cretaceous, about 100 million years old. Belemnites and Ammonites are plentiful if you have time to search for them. Not today for me, but maybe I'll have some time during the next stage. After a walk around the beach, it is a long way uphill, with a lunch break at the viewpoint bench.

Plenty of sea potato shells, Echinocardium cordatum, a species of sea urchin, on the tideline.

A reminder to always be wary when walking on Speeton Clay! I found this boot stuck in the clay just by the footpath down to the beach.

Flamborough Headland and bird conservation history
Bempton Cliffs was established half a century ago by the RSPB, but bird conservation in the Flamborough Headland has a much longer history. Nelson’s ‘The Birds of Yorkshire’ written at the beginning of the 20th century, provides a first-hand account of the traditional egg harvesting carried out by local ‘climmers’ and the impact of uncontrolled gunning on the state of the sea bird colonies. Egg harvesting appeared to be sustainable as there were inaccessible areas of the cliff where eggs couldn’t be collected, and rainy weather prevented descending onto the cliffs, and also relied on the ability of the birds to lay replacement clutches. However, as the railway opened in 1847, servicing stations in Flamborough and Bempton, and the availability of hunting guns increased, many people went to the cliffs to shoot birds from boats. Local naturalists became aware of the impact of this indiscriminate hunting on several species, especially given that it took place during the nesting season. Nelson, remarks on the declining fortunes of local species like the Dotterel, Raven, Peregrine or Kittiwake due to gunners that hunted the birds for their feathers during migration, killing of adults on the nesting season, the extermination efforts of gamekeepers, the removal of eggs for collectors or young for falconry or entertainment (like Raven’s) and habitat change. Some of these species, like the Raven, had already disappeared from the cliffs. The last known pair nested in the mid 1800s on the cliff near the King and Queen Rocks.

 One of the earliest bird conservation societies was actually established at Bridlington in 1868 in response for these increases in hunting and noticeable decrease in the numbers of sea birds at the cliffs of Flamborough: The Association for the Protection of sea-birds, was founded by the Rev. Henry Frederick Barnes-Lawrence, of Bridlington Priory Church. The association obtained so much local and national support that the following year, the Sea Birds Preservation Act 1869 was passed, banning the hunting of sea birds from the 1st of April to the 1st of August. This was the first piece of parliamentary legislation protecting birds in the UK.

The act appeared to have an effect as Nelson writing on the Kittiwake:
“nesting in considerable numbers on the cliffs of the Flamborough range at Bempton and Speeton. In the first half of the past century it was extremely abundant there — Charles Waterton, in 1834, found the nests so numerous as totally to defy any attempt to count them — but, unfortunately, a demand arose for the beautiful feathers forming its plumage, and thousands were slaughtered to meet the exigencies of fashion ; it has been asserted that a single gunner made from £15 to 18 per week, during the season, for feathers, whilst in one year four thousand birds passed through his hands, being sent to London plumassiers. The time chosen for shooting was just as the birds were building their nests [...] Excursionists and gunners from inland towns were also guilty of wanton cruelty in shooting the poor birds while nesting, the young being left to perish on the cliffs, and there was a danger of their extermination, until the passing of the Sea-birds Preservation Act of 1869 put an end to the butchery. Now the numbers of nesting birds are gradually increasing, although, where one nest may at present be seen, there used formerly to be half-a-dozen, and the eggs were then sold at the rate of four or five for a penny.”

Walking back

Herring Gull fledgling. Herring Gulls are not doing so well on the cliffs, unlike their urban counterparts, this is the only fledgling I came across.

There was a wheel of Gannets just off the RSPB visitor centre, they weren't fishing, they just went round and round, and individuals joined and left. The wheel stayed in the same spot for quite a while, I had been watching it from the distance, and when I got closest to it, on one of the viewing points one of the RSPB staff explained that Gannets do this when there is a fight.

I zoomed with my camera and spotted these two gannets. It didn't look like this was a fight, but the individuals appeared entangled together, possibly on some fishing line? One of them was already dead. Really sad to watch.

To compensate, a recently fledged Gannet.

And it was nice to end the walk with a Whinchat by the Bempton Cliffs visitor centre.

Peregrine circling the cliffs.

Featured bird: Peregrine

Peregrines are mostly resident birds although individuals may move from the uplands to the coast in winter.  Peregrines are a conservation success story, they are currently not a bird of conservation concern, as they were moved from amber to green in 2009 in the UK. This is also reflected in our area: the most recent estimates give five pairs of Peregrines breeding in the Flamborough Peninsula. But the peregrine stopped being a breeding bird in the cliffs more than once. On the Peregrine, Nelson declares: “It is an unmistakable pleasure to be able still to claim this noble bird as a resident. A pair or two bred almost annually until 1879 in the stupendous cliffs of our coast at Flamborough and Speeton, where its favourite prey, the Rock Pigeon, is numerous, and occasionally a pair or two also breed inland. 

Later conservation efforts of the Yorkshire Naturalists Union included to engage with 'climmers', to watch Peregrine nests of the Flamborough and Bempton cliffs:
“This year the Peregrine Falcons have returned to their usual site at Ravencliff, on the Bempton cliffs. There are two young ones, and it is pleasing to report that, as a result of the stringent watching that has been kept by the 'climmers' and others, the birds have been successfully reared".

Despite these and other efforts to reduce persecution and egg collecting, the Peregrine almost became extinct in the 1960s as a result of the use of pesticides, which thinned their egg shells, and persecution. Today DDT is banned and persecution, although happens, is illegal. Although there are still issues with upland Peregrine populations, the species populations have increased in size and the Peregrine has returned to the cliffs and is also returned to our cities, 

Walk information
Start Bempton Visitor centre TA197739. Finish Speeton Black Cliffs. 11 km circular. Toilets and refreshments at Bempton Cliffs RSPB visitor centre. Access to beach from headland way at the ravine at Black Cliffs (steep steps and last few meters on the clay itself).

More information

The History of the RSPB:
https://www.rspb.org.uk/about-the-rspb/about-us/our-history/

A walk from Bempton to Speeton Sands:
http://www.hilltopkat.com/a-walk-from-bempton-cliffs-to-speeton-sands/

Walk from Speeton to Reighton Gap:
http://yorkshirefootsteps.blogspot.com/2018/02/speeton-medium-walk.html

Article in the Yorkshire Post: How Bempton Cliffs became seabird conservation birthplace after bloody history.

Nelson’s ‘The Birds of Yorkshire’ . Complete searchable and digitised book at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Flamborough Bird Observatory. 2019 Report. Available here.

Fossils UK: Speeton.