Country diary: Back to these cliffs go I, and these petrels | Jim Perrin

Lydstep, Pembroke: As I lounge among the rich spring fauna, I watch the storm petrels - long-haul specialists that have returned here from South AfricaThe banks of the track were lapidary with spring flowers: wood anemones and stitchwort, dog violets and ramson, vernal squills shimmering azure across the greensward as I emerged on to the headland. As old climbers will, I was returning to a memorable place of my youth: Mother Carey's Kitchen. You'll find the name on navigation charts these days, but it's not as traditional as you might assume - I coined it after I first stood at the foot of its impressive high buttress of seamed walls, steep corners and bold ar?tes.Why? Because on that May morning 55 years ago, the air thronged with "Mother Carey's chickens": storm petrels, the smallest of seabirds, about the size of a sparrow, dark-plumaged and white-rumped. How wonderful to see them here over the sea once more, light and fluttery in their flight, wings angled as they stoop to feed on plankton and small, floating crustacea. Continue reading...