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.
