A grey and breezy start to the day, though along the cliffs, the rising sun casts shards of pale gold onto a slaty sea.
Out in the distance, a few brilliant white Gannets pass by, with a skein of bulky-bodied Brent Geese along a brightening horizon.
Closer to the cliffs, a pair of Guillemots take off from the water, making a running start along the surface of the water before finally making it aloft in a blur of wings.
Shags and Great Black-backed Gulls battle the wind in close to the cliffs, with a Peregrine cruising by the cliff edge, so close that I could almost reach out and touch him!
Rock Pipits skitter among the dry grasses on the clifftop, while several charms of red and gold Goldfinches chatter from the Blackthorn above the Coast Path filling the air with their jangling calls.
No sign yet of the Pallas’s Warbler, which spent most of yesterday among the scrub below the bridge to Caravan Terrace. An unusual bird to see here – about 3,000 miles from it’s breeding grounds in China or South-east Asia! Only about 60 or 70 a year end up in the UK – blown north during their long migration to Spain. Worth keeping an eye out, as it’s really a very pretty little bird – a cousin of Goldcrests and Firecrests, both of which I did manage to spot, darting around among the tangle of Old Man’s Beard, Sallow, Sycamore, Holm Oak, Wayfaring Tree and Blackthorn.
Above Caravan Terrace, the bright red breast of a Bullfinch catches my eye – a single splash of vivid colour among the soft greys and browns of autumn.
In the woodland, a Treecreeper scuttles up the trunk of a Sycamore along the ‘Pinecliff Walk’, as a Dunnock scuffles noisily among the dry, orange fallen leaves of a Horse Chestnut and Jays squawk as they wrench acorns from a hunched, twisted Holm Oak.