On a grey, chill day with a south-westerly wind bringing showers and the tide low, I walked north along the coast path this morning, leaving it when I spotted....
....what turned out to be the corpses of two guillemots washed up along last night's high-tide line; and as I wandered further along the beach I began counting finding....
....the usual guillemots with their sharp beaks - four in all - but almost as many....
....razorbills, which are very similar in size and looks to the guillemots but are auks, with a very distinctive beak.
While we did find sick and dead razorbills along the shore the last time there was a serious outbreak of bird flu, back in the summer of 2022, they were outnumbered by guillemots and gannets.
In all, I found seven dead divers along a kilometre stretch of beach: only a few days ago, when we were last along this beach, we found only one.
On a grey, chill day with a south-westerly wind bringing showers and the tide low, I walked north along the coast path this morning, leaving it when I spotted.... 
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