Skomer Puffins
At last, I made it to Skomer! The weather can be a bit dodgy, so I booked two consecutive days, plus a round island boat trip to see the cliffs from a different view.
First day was exploring the island and the second focussing more on catching the Puffins flying in with fish. Takeaways – Puffins are small, fly very fast, and completely ignore humans. Occasionally, when landing with a beak full of sandeels, they’ll look a bit confused before dashing off to their burrow. At other times they seem to dive straight into their burrows. Sand eels are long, thin fish – many species – that grow up to 30 cm and congregate in large shoals, so it’s pretty easy for the puffins, who are great swimmers, to charge through them and collect a good beakfull.
Manx shearwaters sleep in their burrows during the day and feed at night. The island is covered in burrows, making it a challenge to avoid damaging them as they are right up to the narrow path around the island.
The sight of hundreds of birds – puffins, razorbills and guillemots – flying out from the cliffs and returning with food, is spectacular.
If I go again, I’ll try to get some shots of the puffins flying, but it’s really difficult due to their speed, and they are very small.
Morcambe Bay
I’m reminded of the episode of Father Ted in which Ted tries to explain perspective to Dougal, “…these (model cows) are very small, but those outside aren’t small - they’re just faaar away.”
I’m reminded of the episode of Father Ted in which Ted tries to explain perspective to Dougal, “…these (model cows) are very small, but those outside aren’t small - they’re just faaar away.” I’ve just spent a week in Morcambe in the hope of getting some nice images of waders. But I didn’t realise just how small they were, and how infuriatingly far away they were. Morcambe Bay is HUGE. The sea goes out so far, you can’t see it - and that’s where many of the birds are. Yet another learning experience. Using my 600mm zoom on the XT5 I was able to get close enough, but the conditions were not right for anything artistic. My first experience really looking at these birds and seeing their behaiviour.
