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Your Nearest Wild Neighbours

Anyone who moves to the coast soon discovers that the soundtrack of seaside life is not the waves but the birds. A screaming gull at half past five in the morning is as much a part of British coastal living as the smell of seaweed and the rattle of pebbles. Learning who is who turns that noise into something far more interesting — and it makes you a better, quieter neighbour to the creatures sharing your patch.

You do not need expensive kit. A pair of 8x42 binoculars, a decent waterproof and a little patience will do. The trick is to look at four things: size, shape, colour and behaviour. The last one matters most. Where a bird stands, how it flies and what it does with its day will usually tell you what it is before you get a close look at its plumage.

Gulls: More Than Just Chip Thieves

Britain has several breeding gulls and they are not all the same bird. The herring gull is the classic seaside gull: pale grey back, pink legs, and a heavy yellow bill with a red spot near the tip. It is the one most likely to be shouting from your chimney pot, and the one most likely to relieve you of a pasty.

The lesser black-backed gull looks similar but has a much darker slate-grey back and, helpfully, yellow legs. The great black-backed gull is the heavyweight — a genuinely large bird with a near-black back, and a reputation for bullying everything in sight. Then there is the common gull, which is neither especially common nor especially large; it is daintier, with a gentler expression and a softer call.

• Herring gull: pink legs, pale grey back, red spot on the bill.
• Lesser black-backed gull: yellow legs, dark grey back.
• Great black-backed gull: big, black-backed, bullies the lot.
• Common gull: small, round-headed, mild-mannered.

Young gulls are brown and mottled for their first few years and confuse almost everyone. Do not worry about it. If you can age a gull by its plumage you are already well ahead of most of your neighbours.

Gannets: The Ocean's Long-Distance Divers

Britain holds a huge share of the world's northern gannets, and a gannet is unmistakable once seen well. It is a large, dazzlingly white seabird with black wingtips, a creamy-yellow head and a dagger of a bill. From a cliff-top path you may see them streaming past in loose lines, wings stiff and straight, rarely flapping.

The reward for watching patiently is the dive. A gannet folds its wings and drops from thirty metres or more, hitting the water at speeds that would knock a human senseless. Look for the splash and the vertical plume of white water. If you are on a headland in spring or summer, you may also see them circling their nesting colonies, packed shoulder to shoulder on the rock ledges.

Cormorants and Shags: The Dark Submarines

These two are the birds you see standing on rocks with their wings held out to dry, looking faintly prehistoric. Both are dark, slim and expert divers, and both can be told from a distance by posture: they sit low in the water when swimming, with only the head and neck showing.

The cormorant is larger, with a thicker neck and, in breeding plumage, a striking white patch on the thigh and a white face patch. The shag is slimmer, smaller and greener-looking, and in spring it grows a jaunty little crest. Shags tend to favour rocky coasts and shallow dives; cormorants are happy in estuaries and even on inland lakes. When a cormorant flies, its neck looks slightly kinked; the shag's looks straighter.

Oystercatchers: The Shoreline Pipers

The oystercatcher is the bird that most often convinces people they have seen something exotic. It is a striking black and white wader with a long orange bill, pink legs and a bright red eye. You will usually hear it before you see it — a far-carrying pip-pip-pip that travels across the sand at dusk.

Despite the name, they rarely eat oysters. Their bill is a specialist tool for prising open mussels and cockles, and you can often watch one hammering or levering at a shell on the tideline. They nest on beaches and shingle above the high-water mark, which makes them vulnerable to disturbance. A nest is little more than a scrape in the stones, and the eggs are wonderfully camouflaged — so watch where you walk.

Watching Without Disturbing Them

Seabird colonies are fragile things. A single dog off the lead or an over-eager photographer can put hundreds of birds off their nests, leaving eggs and chicks exposed to cold and predators. A few simple habits make an enormous difference.

• Keep to marked paths on cliffs and never climb over fences for a better angle.
• Keep dogs on a short lead around nesting areas, especially from March to July.
• Use binoculars rather than your feet — the best view is the one that does not cost a bird its breeding season.
• Give roosting birds space at high tide, when they are already stressed and concentrated.
• Watch for alarm behaviour: birds calling harshly and flying up are telling you to back off.

Learn a handful of these species and the coast becomes a far richer place. The gull on the roof, the cormorant on the buoy and the oystercatchers piping along the tideline stop being scenery and become characters in the daily life of your town — noisy, grubby, occasionally infuriating, and utterly worth knowing.