Atlantic Puffins

 Here are shots of three different birds from my recent trip to Skomer. I will take a break from posting pictures of the birdlife on the island and go onto other subjects, so I wanted to make this post special with some really nice shots. I have already written about some puffin related facts in previous posts so I won't repeat that here, instead I will just let the pictures do the talking. These are such stunning, beautiful birds and it was a real privilege to photograph them.

Guillemot

 This is a Guillemot, a member of the auk family and one of the most common seabirds to nest around our shores, however this was the only pair of the birds that I could photograph on Skomer, the rest were nesting too far away.

As with the puffins the male and female birds spend the winter apart, meeting up in the breeding season when they lay one egg on a rocky ledge. They don't make a nest but as in this shot they clear the space of any stones or debris that might be in the way.

When the egg hatches both parents will attend to the chick for the first three weeks or so after which the chick will go to the water where it is looked after exclusively by the male parent who will feed it and train it for the next 12 weeks. |t does not fly until it is 8 - 10 weeks old 

Razorbill

 As well as Puffins on Skomer there is a large population of Razorbills, although as they nest of cliffs and rocky outcrops it is more difficult to get close up photos.

Fortunately these birds were nesting close to the pathway that leads down the cliff to the landing stage and so I was able to get a few shots.

Although they lack the brightly coloured bills of the puffin they are stunning birds. I was really pleased to get a shot of the two birds grooming each other. It seems like such a tender moment.

Fly Past

 Every single photographer I saw and spoke to on my trip to Skomer was after a shot of a puffin coming into land; shoulders back, feet forward and wings outstretched to achieve a stable landing, and after that it was a shot of the birds in flight. As one guy said to me "the success rate is less than 0.5% but we keep on trying". He was not wrong, it is so hard to get a good shot of these birds in flight. They are small and super fast and for me it didn't help that I had the shutter speed too slow for the first few attempts. The first three shots above were shot at 1/640 sec which was clearly too slow to get a clear image, and even the last shot at 1/2000 sec is not as sharp as I would like. The problem is tracking such a small bird at speed, maintaining focus and keeping camera shake to a minimum. Perhaps the guys with gimbals on their tripods had better luck but despite the shortcomings I think that for these hand held shots I did OK. 

Living on the Edge

 I don't think I can say much about these shots, other than it was so exciting to be able to get close to these beautiful creatures. They really are such special birds. I am always amazed at how hardy they are given how small they are and the life they lead, 8 months out at sea, 4 months on a rocky island in a burrow underground.

In a few weeks when their eggs hatch these birds will be on a constant round of fishing and feeding the little pufflings, who when they have fledged effectively just hurl themselves off the cliff into the air and they too will very soon head off out into the wild ocean.

A Cute Couple

 

I still have some other great pictures from my trip to share but I couldn't wait to get to the puffin pics and so I have jumped right in with this cute little couple.

There are over 42,000 pairs of puffins on Skomer at this time of year. At the moment many of them are inside their burrows sitting on eggs or out on the water feeding so while I got to see lots of birds there were not as many on display as at other times of the breeding season. In fact this was the only pair I saw together the whole time I was on the island. It was so cool to catch them preening each other and making gentle "growling" sounds before one went back underground to their egg. I figured it was a changing of the guard situation, perhaps one is relaying information about the best fishing spots while the other is giving an update on the egg.

Did you know that the average lifespan for a puffin is 30 years but the oldest recorded age is 41 years although it is thought likely that birds could live longer than that it is just that the bands used to tag the birds don't last as long as the birds do. They reach maturity and start breeding from 5 - 6 years old and remain with their mate for the rest of their lives. Outside of the breeding season they spend about 8 months apart out at sea, they return to the same nesting sites each spring and somehow from among the thousand of other birds they manage to find each other to raise the next generation of their family.

Across the Harbour and out to Sea

 Ostensibly these photos are all of the same view, taken from the same spot on the pier at the bottom of Tate Hill in Whitby. All were taken within the space of one hour, probably less, but you can see how dramatically the sky has changed in that time. Ok, so the black and white images may give the appearance of a more stormy sky than it actually was but the cloud cover was certainly much thicker in the earlier shots.

At the same time the sunlight from behind me remained fairly constant lighting up the wall of the east pier, and the two lighthouses.

I like the way the sunlight also catches the seagulls in the first image as they flock around the lighthouse, I think the birds, the people on the pier and the brooding clouds add a sense of drama to that image. I think the song "The  Seabirds" by The Triffids goes well with this first picture.

Black Headed Gull

 This is a pretty common sight around out coastline, a black headed gull. "Black headed ?"you say, "surely not! " But yes, it is a non breeding adult, the black head you would expect to see is actually the breeding plumage.

This might seem a fairly boring subject for my blog pictures when there are more exciting species to go in search of, and to be honest I would much rather be photographing more exotic species. However wildlife photography involves a lot of patience and a lot of effort and sometimes you just have to shoot what is there. 

I had gone out onto the beach waiting for the tide to come in and to see the flocks of waders that come in ahead of the tide. It was a little further out than I had expected so as I waited I tried to get some practice with the gulls.

In the first image you can see that it was calling out, maybe a warning to keep my distance, look at that long floppy tongue. In the second image it had walked a little further away before launching into the air as flying away as you can see in the final image.

Mediterranean Visitor

A couple more pictures from my walk yesterday testing out my gimbal head.

The first two shots are of a beautiful Mediterranean Gull that was flying about above my head. 

The third is another shot of the Gull-billed Tern (see yesterdays post for some more images of this wonderful visitor).

Winter Plumage

This is an adult Black Headed Gull in winter plumage. Because it was such a grey day and because the plumage is white and shades of grey I decided to to shoot this in black and white which I think really works well. 

The only problem with that is we miss the only bit of colour which is the scarlet beak (also tipped with black) and so to give added value here is a cropped image of the beak, in glorious colour...

In A Flap

The last of my pictures from Skomer (well the last that I am posting to my blog anyway) and I hope you will agree that they're pretty good. I have really enjoyed sharing my photos from that trip I think they are among my most favourite shots since I started this blog.

Tomorrow I will be choosing something very different and then later in the week I will begin a series of very colourful pictures from a recent day out which I can't wait to share with you.

Island Life

So after a week of different critters from Skomer I have finally got back to the whole reason I visited the island in the first place. The Atlantic Puffin. 

I was going to post puffins today and then tomorrow I was going to move on to something completely different but trying to narrow down my selection I came up with nine pictures and that was just too much for one post, a little bit of puffin overkill. 

So for today here are four fantastic shots and tomorrow you will have to come back for the other five. I promise that you won't be disappointed because they're just as special as these and I know how much some of my regular visitors loved the earlier pictures so these are for you.