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A Guide to Coastal Wildlife: Sea Cliffs

A Guide to Coastal Wildlife

Sea Cliffs

BBC Radio 4 - A Guide to Coastal Wildlife, Sea Cliffs

An entertaining and informative guide to the wildlife of coastal sea cliffs.

Brett Westwood and Phil Gates take a look at kittiwakes and sea pink, most likely to be found on coastal sea cliffs. From March 2016.

What has an old threepenny coin and a sea cliff in common? 

Well, the answer can be found in this programme when Brett Westwood joins naturalist Phil Gates on the Northumberland coast and discovers how plants and animals have evolved to survive the battering waves, salt spray and driving winds in one of the most hostile habitats on our coastline, the sea cliffs. 

Their first encounter is with sea pink or thrift, a plant which has evolved to survive the high levels of salt by sequestering salt into its leaves which then die off, and are replaced by new leaves. Lured by the cries of birds calling out their name "kitti-waak", "kitti-waak", they clamber across the rocks into a cove where kittiwakes and fulmars are nesting on a sheer cliff face. 

Brett learns why the young chicks don’t fall off their narrow ledges and how fulmars keep predators at bay (the clue is in their name which means, foul mouth). Below the birds, where the waves pound against the rocks, the surface is studded with barnacles and limpets, and away from the roar of the waves, in a quiet spot amongst coconut-scented gorse bushes Brett and Phil discuss just how these creatures manage to ‘cling on’, survive and thrive! 

Producer: Sarah Blunt

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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Brett Westwood and Phil Gates present a guide to some of Britain's coastal wildlife.

Brett Westwood and Phil Gates, with the help of sound recordist Chris Watson, present a guide to some of Britain's commonest and most curious coastal wildlife.

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