The visit
My one visit to RSPB Bempton Cliffs was in late July 2025, and if I had done my research properly I might not have gone. Late July is the very tail end of the puffin season — most birds have left the cliffs by then, headed back out to sea for the long winter — and Bempton is famous for its puffins. I drove over from Lancashire on a weekend morning, motorway then country lanes, with the camera kit packed and a half-formed plan to spend the day photographing seabirds. I knew none of the timing risk. I just knew I wanted puffins and that Bempton was meant to be the easiest cliff in England to see them on.
It worked out, but not in the way I had expected.
I arrived at the on-site car park just before 7 am. There were plenty of spaces — the place was quiet — and the air was still, the kind of calm summer morning that almost never happens on the East Yorkshire coast. The cliffs are exposed: there is no shelter, nothing between you and the North Sea, and Bempton on a windy day is a different proposition from Bempton on a calm one. I had got lucky, and I would only realise quite how lucky later.
I got out of the car, slung the Sony A1 with the 200–600mm over my shoulder, picked up the OM-1 II with the 300 f/4 and 1.4x teleconverter as a second body, dropped the A7R V with the 24–70 into the bag for landscape work, and started walking left from the car park towards the cliff viewpoints. I was barely fifty yards from the car when the day handed me something I had not come for.
The barn owl bonus
On the rough ground to the left of the path, no further than 30 metres out, a barn owl was actively hunting. Quartering low, hovering, dropping into the long grass for prey, lifting off again, working the field margin. There was one other photographer there — a landscape shooter, not equipped for wildlife — and the bird had effectively the cliff path to itself. I lifted the A1 with the 200–600 and started working it.
It stayed for at least 30 minutes. That sounds like a long time, and it was. Barn owls are dawn and dusk hunters; by 9 or 10 am most of them are roosting and you do not see them again until evening. I was watching the very tail end of a morning hunt, in the marginal warm light that follows true sunrise, and the bird was prepared to keep working in front of me for as long as it took to feed itself. I shot a few hundred frames. When I downloaded them at home that night, every single one was sharp and in focus. That is not a comment on the photographer — it is a comment on the Sony A1's bird-eye autofocus working exactly as it is meant to, on a small fast bird in soft light, with a competent zoom at the long end. The 200–600 G is not the most glamorous lens in the bag, but at 7 am on a calm morning over rough Yorkshire grass with a barn owl hovering 30 metres out, it is the right tool.
I had not expected it. Nothing I had read about Bempton suggested barn owls were a regular feature. The reserve markets itself, reasonably, on its 13,000 pairs of gannets and its puffins — the barn owl is not in the brochure. But the rough fields immediately around the visitor centre and car park clearly support them, and if you arrive early enough that the morning hunt is still in play, you have a chance of one. **Arrive at dawn — that single piece of advice is the most useful thing this guide can give you.**
The puffins
Once the barn owl drifted off and the light started getting bright, I walked back past the car park and headed out along the cliff path towards the seabird viewpoints. Bempton has six named platforms along the path, each a fenced timber lookout poking out over the cliff edge: Staple Newk, Grandstand, Bartlett Nab, Jubilee Corner and New Roll-Up. I worked my way along.
The closer viewpoints — the ones nearest the visitor centre — were busy with gannets but not, on that day, with puffins. Most of the puffin activity had clearly already shifted out to sea. I would have walked the whole path, found nothing, and gone home disappointed except that I met a local photographer at one of the further viewpoints who knew exactly where the remaining stragglers still were. He pointed me to a stretch of cliff to the right, further along than the main viewing platforms, where a few birds were still on the ledges below. Without him I would not have seen any puffins that day. **That single conversation made the trip.**
The puffins I did see were on the cliffs directly below me, sitting on the ledges and around burrow entrances, occasionally flying in and out from the sea. I got the static shots — clean profiles, eye-level frames, beak detail — but I did not get the in-flight shots I had wanted. Bempton puffins fly fast, low and unpredictable from a clifftop angle, and they are genuinely harder to capture in flight here than at Skomer or the Farne Islands where you can be at sea level or burrow level with them. If puffins in flight are your photographic target, Bempton is not the easiest site to hit them at. Sitting birds, profile shots, the famous beak-full-of-sandeels moment when you are lucky — Bempton is excellent for those. Flight is harder.
The gannets
The gannets were everywhere — but they were not, on that day, on the nests in the way they would have been six weeks earlier. Late July is the tail end of the chick-rearing season, and many of the birds I saw were soaring and hovering on the sea breeze rather than locked tight to the cliff face. That made the in-flight shots straightforward: a gannet hanging on the updraft 20 metres from the platform fence, looking down at the sea, is one of the great free portraits in British wildlife photography. Get the wing position right, get the eye sharp, and the cliff colours behind the bird do the rest.
I did not see chicks on nests in any obvious numbers. By that stage of the season many had already fledged, and the colony had a different feel from the peak-season images you see in spring photography articles. **That is something to weigh up if you are planning a Bempton visit specifically for gannet behaviour.** Earlier in the season — May through early July — you get the colony at its tightest, with eggs, chicks, courtship displays and pair-bonding all in active view. Late July is more about the spectacle of the soaring and less about the intimate nest-site behaviour.
What I missed
There were dolphins in the bay during my visit. I saw the splashes from the cliff path, too far out for a useful frame, and I did not have time to set up properly before they had moved on. White-beaked and bottlenose dolphins are seen off Bempton fairly regularly through the summer, and minke whales pass too. **If I had known marine wildlife was in play, I would have allocated a session specifically to scanning the sea rather than concentrating exclusively on the cliffs.** Next time I will. Four hours, in retrospect, was nowhere near enough.
The other thing I missed was the puffin in flight. With more time, with knowledge of where the remaining birds were operating from, and with a chance to position for a clean angle, I think I could have got there. That is what a return visit is for.
Seasonal Calendar
Spring (April–May)
The colony filling up, gannets pairing and nest-building, puffins arriving, fulmars and razorbills active. Light is improving, days are lengthening, the cliffs are at their freshest. Arguably the strongest season for sustained colony behaviour.
Early Summer (June–early July)
Peak. Puffins in good numbers, gannet chicks visible on nests, kittiwakes at their loudest, gannets feeding mates, courtship, the full theatre of a working seabird city. If you can only come once, come now.
Late Summer (mid-July onwards)
The transition. Most puffins leave by late July. Gannet activity shifts from nest-tied to airborne. Migration starts. Marine mammals more reliably seen offshore. This is when I went, and the trade-off was real — I missed peak puffins and got an unexpected barn owl as compensation.
Autumn and Winter (September–March)
The cliffs are quiet. Gannets gone, puffins gone, kittiwakes gone. Sea-watching for skuas, shearwaters, divers and sea ducks becomes the photographic draw, and conditions are demanding. Not a season I have shot — yet.
Photography Kit (What I Carried)
I took three bodies and a deliberately overlapping focal range.
Sony A1 with FE 200–600mm G
The wildlife pairing. Did all the heavy lifting — the barn owl, the gannets in flight, the puffin portraits. The A1's bird-eye AF is best in class and the 200–600 has the reach you need from a clifftop fence to a bird on a ledge below or hanging on the breeze 20 metres out.
OM System OM-1 Mark II with 300mm f/4 Pro and 1.4x teleconverter
Equivalent to 840mm full-frame. Lighter than the Sony combo, faster to deploy. I used this as a second body when the action was tight to the fence and I did not have time to swap lenses on the A1.
Sony A7R V with FE 24–70mm f/2.8 GM II
The landscape body. The wide cliff vista — chalk cliffs receding towards the horizon, the gannet colony visible on the rock outcrop, the visitor fence anchoring the foreground — is the frame I now value most from this trip, and it would not have happened with a long lens. **Take a wide-angle setup to Bempton. The cliff itself is a subject.**
Next time
I now own a Sigma 500mm f/5.6 prime, which I would take instead of the 200–600 for sharper rendering at distance. Where possible I would shoot with primes — they have the optical edge and Bempton's clifftop angles reward that. And I would take the DJI Pocket 3 for video. The colony on the breeze, the gannets soaring, the cliff scale — those are video subjects as much as stills, and a single moving frame can convey the place better than a hundred still ones.
Practical Information
The on-site car park is large and was nearly empty at 7 am. By 11 am most spaces had filled. **Arrive early. Always.**
The visitor centre opens later in the morning. I went in briefly to grab something to eat and drink, and ate it on the benches outside. The café and shop are run to RSPB standards — perfectly fine, nothing extraordinary. Toilets are clean and accessible.
The path itself is well-surfaced and clearly maintained — credit to the RSPB volunteers who keep it so. It was dry on the day of my visit. I walked roughly a few miles in total, working both directions of the cliff path from the visitor centre. Nothing about the walking was demanding. The viewpoints themselves are fenced timber platforms set back from the cliff edge — they feel safe, even with children, but the drop is real, and you should keep small children close on a windy day.
Speaking of which: **the single most important piece of practical kit for Bempton is a windproof, waterproof jacket. The site is fully exposed to the North Sea. There is no shelter on the cliff path. On a windy day photography is genuinely difficult — the cameras shake, the wind pulls focus, the cold cuts through anything inadequate. Watch the weather forecast and pick a calm day.** I got lucky with mine. Most visits are not that calm.
How It Compares
Bempton is the easy puffin site. Skomer involves a boat, the Farnes involve a longer journey and a boat, Lunga and Staffa involve a serious commitment. Bempton you drive to, park, and walk a flat path. That accessibility is its single biggest advantage and the reason it draws more visitors than any of the others.
The trade-off is that you are above the birds rather than level with them, which is a harder photographic angle than the cliff-edge nests at Skomer or the burrow margins at the Farnes. **For sitting puffin portraits and gannet flight shots Bempton is excellent. For puffin in-flight work the boat sites have the edge.**
For gannet colony work specifically, Bempton is the largest mainland gannetry in the UK. Bass Rock has more birds but you cannot land on it. If you want to photograph gannets without a boat, Bempton is the one.
The Bottom Line
Go in early summer if you can — June or early July, on a calm day, arriving at dawn. If you go later in July like I did, accept that the puffins will be gone or going, and look for what the season does offer: gannets in the air, the chance of an early barn owl, marine mammals offshore, and the cliffs themselves at their most stable. **Always check the wind forecast before you commit.** Bring a wide-angle lens as well as your long glass. Allow a full day, not four hours. Pack a flask and a sandwich. Talk to the other photographers at the viewpoints — at Bempton, that single conversation is what made my trip.
I will be going back, properly this time, in early June.