Read the Tide Before You Fall in Love with the View

Every good coastal walk begins at the kitchen table with a tide table. Britain's tidal range is enormous — in the Bristol Channel it can be 12 metres or more — and the difference between high and low water is the difference between a rockpool full of life and a wall of seawater where the path used to be.

For wildlife watching, aim for the two hours either side of low water. That is when the strandline is exposed, rockpools are at their fullest and waders are feeding on the mudflats. Spring tides — the biggest ones, around the new and full moon — give you the widest window and the most dramatic scenery, but they also fill coves fastest. Check the time of high water as well as low, then plan your turnaround so you are never relying on a retreating tide to let you back up a cliff path.

Time of day matters too. Seabirds are most active in the first two hours after dawn, and a rising onshore wind in spring pushes auks, gannets and shearwaters close in to the cliffs. An offshore wind does the opposite, sending them out to sea.

Seabird Cities on the Cliffs

Between April and July, a British cliff ledge becomes a densely packed city. Guillemots — chocolate-brown, upright, endlessly noisy — cluster on the narrowest ledges. Razorbills, stouter with a blunt bill, nest in cracks nearby. Kittiwakes build messy cups of seaweed on the steepest rock, calling their own name in a hard three-note cry.

Puffins are the ones most people come for, and they reward patience. Look for them on grassy slopes and in burrows at the top of the cliff rather than on the sheer faces, and remember their season is short: most leave by early August, once the pufflings have fledged.

Two things are worth knowing. First, fulmars look like small gulls but fly on stiff, straight wings and will spit a foul-smelling oil if you crowd them — keep well back. Second, look out to sea for feeding flocks. When gannets begin plunging vertically into a patch of water, fish have been driven to the surface and there is often far more going on beneath them than you would ever guess from the cliff top.

On the west and south-west coasts, watch for choughs: glossy black crows with red bills and a wild, tumbling flight. They nest in sea caves and on ledges, and a sighting is genuinely special.

Watching Seals Without Causing a Stampede

Two species share our coasts, and they are easy to tell apart once you know what to look for.

• Grey seals have a long, sloping "Roman" nose and pups are born in autumn, mostly between September and November. They haul out on rocky skerries and remote beaches.
• Common (harbour) seals have a shorter, rounder face and a distinctive banana-shaped resting pose. They prefer sheltered estuaries and sandbanks, and pups arrive in early summer.

The golden rule is simple: if the seals are looking at you, they have already noticed you. If heads lift and animals start shuffling towards the water, you are too close. Stay at least 100 metres away on land, use binoculars rather than your feet, and never position yourself between a seal and the sea — that is their only escape route. Keep dogs on a short lead anywhere seals haul out, and if you are in a boat or kayak, keep your distance and never approach head-on. A disturbed colony can lose a whole season's pups.

Dune, Shingle and Cliff-top Flowers

Coastal plants are specialists, and the best displays run from May to July. On cliff tops look for spring squill, sea campion and the pink cushions of thrift. Shingle beaches — the harder habitat of the two — support yellow horned poppies with their long, curved seed pods and the deep blue spikes of viper's bugloss, a plant that thrives on bare, shifting pebbles.

Behind the beach, mobile dunes give way to fixed dunes, and the whole system is held together by marram grass. Walking through it shreds the roots that bind the sand, so stay on the paths. On the dunes themselves, sea holly, kidney vetch and bloody cranesbill all reward a slow look. The kidney vetch matters especially: it is the sole food plant of the small blue butterfly's caterpillars.

The Strandline and the Rockpools

The strandline — that dark ribbon of weed at the top of the beach — is a natural museum of everything the sea has discarded. Mermaid's purses, the little black egg cases of skates and rays, are common and worth reporting to a recording scheme. So are whelk egg cases, cuttlebone, by-the-wind sailors and the occasional tropical sea bean carried across the Atlantic.

In the rockpools, take your time and keep your hands wet. Beadlet anemones, limpets, periwinkles, blennies and shore crabs are all easy to find. If you do turn a stone, put it back exactly as it was, dark side up, and let any animals settle before you move on. Never prise limpets off rocks: they clamp down and rarely survive it.

Leave Only Footprints, and a Few Good Records

Quiet observation is the whole art. Keep your distance, never feed wildlife, and leave the drone at home — the noise disturbs nesting birds for hundreds of metres. Keep to cliff-top paths rather than scrambling down to ledges, and respect seasonal dog restrictions on beaches where ringed plovers and little terns nest in the sand.

Finally, make your walk count. Note what you see, where and when: a small notebook or a recording app turns a pleasant afternoon into useful data, and local wildlife trusts rely on exactly that kind of detail from walkers. Take your litter home, pick up a plastic bottle if you pass one, and you will leave the coast better than you found it.