Chourdon Point, County Durham: While storms and the sea chew away at these cliffs, a wealth of wildlife blows into view
I’m standing near the cliff edge, on a narrow strip of wild, unmanaged grassland and scrub, with a light, onshore breeze in my face. Beyond the precipice lies the North Sea, calm today. To the south, ships at anchor waiting for a berth, offshore wind turbines and industrial Teesside. To the north, the conurbations of Seaham, Sunderland and South Tyneside. Behind me, agriculture, the coastal railway and a quarry.
It’s high tide, bringing from far below the soporific sound of waves slapping against rocks. Fulmars, stiff-winged and silent, glide past the cliff edge, almost level with my head, giving me a sideways glance as they pass, as if to say: “I bet you wish you could do this.” And I do: it looks so effortless, so pleasurable.
Turning away with a few shallow wingbeats, around they go again, out to sea, then back towards the cliff face, lowering their feet as air brakes at the last moment as they rise to ride the updraught once more.
They pass so close that I can see turbulent airflow ruffling small feathers over the top of their long, slender wings, generating lift.
Around the headland is an impenetrable wall of wind-sculpted blackthorn, which suddenly opens on to another vertiginous, grassy slope, revealing the tiny bay called Hawthorn Hive.
The rock face is magnesian limestone; soft, fast-weathering, prone to landslips. Eventually, storms and sea level rise will send this narrow remnant of wilderness crashing down on to the shore. Every winter, waves chew away at the raised beach that protects the cliffs.
A flicker of wings catches my eye: two small birds, flitting skywards to catch flies. They are hard to identify with the sun in my eyes and lead me a merry dance as I try to get closer. Following them back along the path, I finally see that they are stonechats. The male’s breast feathers are the colour of a glowing ember.
It’s perhaps just as well that knee-high brambles, as daunting as a barbed-wire entanglement, prevent me from getting any closer to their cliff-edge perch.
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