Puffins!

[Felisek]

Excellent shots, Elliot! I particularly like the one with landing gear down.

Is it a large colony on Farne Island?

 

[Elliot87]

Excellent shots, Elliot! I particularly like the one with landing gear down.

Is it a large colony on Farne Island?

Yes it is, the Farne Islands are home to up to 40'000 breeding pairs of Puffins and last year there were over 50'000 individual Guillemots.

Here is another shot with the landing gear fully deployed.

 

[Elliot87]

A few of my favourite portraits.

 

[Vincent]

As announced I was planning Puffin trips, the first one is over, results will come here in the next days.

First opportunity were the Bempton Cliffs in the UK.
Bad weather made the Puffins easy to find we were told, so it was:



our Puffin trip started off well.

 

[Vincent]

So the puffins were far on this spot, but we were happy to have seen some already.



Then someone stated the next platform had them closer. Obviously none there when we arrived but it take not long before some showed up:

 

[Vincent]

Still on that rock on the Bempton cliffs:



Then to go on to the main event a few days later, Puffin therapy on Lunga UK:

 

[Vincent]

So on Lunga you can get close to Puffins, sometime they get dirty from working on their burrow:

 

[Vincent]

I thought this was a walking Puffin from the pictures of others, but this is one scratching itself:


This one is walking:

 

[Vincent]

Some other behaviour:


Those with many fish were too fast into the burrow, this one posed a bit:



Then to the next island, Staffa, where I got cought up in Puffins from the arrival:

 

[Vincent]

Staffa is a different scenery, I was at the wrong side of the Island due to lack of preparation, but that made that it was calm where I was.