Tim Melling – Guillemot

Tim writes: I love the challenge of photographing birds in flight and I spent most of my time at Bempton Cliffs pointing the camera at flying birds.  The great thing about Bempton is that the cliffs are so high you can photograph birds from above, and isolate them from the background.  Guillemot wings move so fast they are just a blur but I managed to freeze them with a fast shutter speed (1/1600).

Guillemots have the smallest breeding territory of any British bird.  They nest in dense groups packed onto bare cliff ledges.  Their single elongated egg is highly variable in both colour and markings which the parents learn to recognise so they don’t end up bringing up the wrong chick in such crowded conditions. 

In America this species is known as the Common Murre (rhymes with blur), and to confuse things further they also have (Pigeon & Black) Guillemots.  I have been corrected many times in Canada when I have called this species a Guillemot.  Two nations divided by a common language.

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