As anyone with an interest in wild bird photography will know, gannets present one of the most stunning subjects available. I have admired other people's photographs for years and yet not come close to getting any reasonable images myself. They can be seen all around the coast flying low over the waves or doing one of their amazing high speed dives after fish. I was stunned to see on a wildlife documentary just how deep they go. This article indicates that the mean dive depth of Northern Gannets in the waters around Orkney was just under 20m!

Anyway, fortunately my aim was to photograph them above the water so no extreme measures were called for and I simply had to find a good place to visit. Gannets are present in huge numbers at a number of well defined sites arounf the UK but none better in terms of accessibility for me than Bempton Cliffs RSPB Reserve near Bridlington in Yorkshire.

A mere 6 hour drive from my base in Somerset makes this cliff top reserve practically on the doorstep according to hardened wildlife photographers. For me as a newcomer to 'target species hunting' it seemed a long way so I broke my journey with my father in Lincolnshire.

At the reserve there is a small visitor centre with a gift shop which also does drinks and snacks. Entrance to the reserve is straight through the shop but before embarking on the cliff top path you can visit a small feeding station just 10m to the left. We saw a handsome linnet in the car park and a good number of tree sparrows amongst the more familiar blue and great tits. Turning right on entering the reserve would take you to a T-junction on the cliff path and we chose to go left along a safely fenced footpath which runs along the edge of an area rough grassland surprisingly close to the cliff edge. The real drama of this site lies in the grandeur of the cliffs which drop nearly vertically a distance of 100m into the North Sea.

To my shame I have to admit that I didn't take any landscape shots myself the picture on the right being a public domain image from the Wikipedia article on the Cliffs here. The only excuse I can muster is that I went in bird hunting mode and was being thoroughly spoiled for choice of subjects. At this point I'd also recommend the general area of Flamborough head as a spectacular place to visit.

The RSPB lists as its star species for this reserve gannets, kittiwakes, puffins, short-eared owls and tree sparrows but for me the real highlight has to be the gannets. Although it was late in the year - August - there was still breeding activity and I've posted below a reasnable shot I managed of these late breeding birds. This was taken with the Canon 30D Sigma 500mm f4.5 and Canon 1.4x TC on a lightweight Benro carbon fibre tripod. In the blustery inshore wind I could really have done with a heavy duty tripod but a) I don't have one and b) my motivation for lugging camera gear around is higher if it doesn't kill me in the process - yes, I'm a wimp.

As we walked along the path the was a continuous toing and froing of herring gulls, kitiwakes but above all gannets. I spent a lot of time trying to get decent shots as they hurtled past and had a measure of success. My favourite of these high speed shots was a sequence which I've posted two below in which one gannet is flying along with seaweed in its mouth and another comes up behind and takes it away; for all the world like skilful relay team members passing the baton. Wonderful to watch!

I managed to catch the whole approach and transfer sequence but it was all happening pretty far off so there's not as much detail as I'd have liked. Why it was happening in the first place I don't know. There seemed to be a lot of collecting of bits of plant matter at the edge of the cliffs as well although I didn't notice any more passing to one another going on. Presumably it's all a sort of bonding exercise but if anyone has any insight into this I'd appreciate your opinion via the coments box beneath this article.

The biggest thrill of the day was when we reached the northernmost end of the cliff path. Here the brisk onshore breeze combuned with the shape of the cliffs had combined to give the perfect updraft for just hanging on the breeze. A large number of birds congregated here using it as a handy way of making an accurate landing amongst some favoured plants on the cliff edge. They seemed completely unconcerned by onlookers and another photographer and I snapped away at a distance of as little as 5m at times. I had to switch to the Canon 100-400mm zoom from time to time as they were so close.

The picture to the right is full frame - just cropped to fit. What great birds these are. Plenty more on my hard drive but lots of people have done it better and in nicer light too so I won't trouble you with more. Unfortunately I failed to get any nice pictures of the kittiwakes and we saw no puffins at all. On the way out we had an unexpected bonus with lots of juvenile swallows soaking up the late afternoon sun while their parents hunted and came back to feed them. I didn't get any particularly good shots but had a couple for the record.

In summary, a great day out and a fantastic place to try out gannet and other seabird photography.