Next week, I'm heading off to Skomer Island again to spend some time with the puffins.
This is only my second visit, the first being in July 2019 – in those far-off pre-pandemic days. To get my eye in a little and prepare for what I'll see, I went back to the original raw files of pictures I took then. Over three days, I took more than 6000 images using my D500 and D810 cameras. 2000 per day – sounds about right when I'm feeling enthusiastic! What shocked me though was how few I'd processed and posted here, or on Flickr. My blog piece from Skomer was quite short and attempted to show not just puffins, but also some of the other wildlife; I was just as interested in showing a fulmar and a chough as puffins. I also didn't even think of trying to tell any story in pictures about the puffins of Skomer. I think at the time, I was probably overwhelmed by the sheer number of images, plus the big RIAT airshow at Fairford was the same month. So, probably 12000 images in the month to look through. Oh well…
Anyhow, with the stimulus of going back to Skomer, I've been through the raw files again and have processed some more. The ones I'm posting here more or less follow some of the themes that I see as key to understanding the puffins in their environment and their natural history.
I won't caption most of the images individually, because they are self-explanatory. But they roughly fall under the themes of portrait, flight, food and diet, reproduction, nesting environment, living in colonies, and predation.
More to come in the next couple of weeks with luck – and if I get them processed :)
The Wick is the site of a large puffin colony on the south side of the island
Slow exposure to covey the movement of a puffin coming in to land. 1/60 sec exposure, a low yield procedure…
Puffling with parent
Puffling
Relatedly, a predator
Lesser black-backed gull. These sit perched on rocks just waiting for the next chance to grab a tasty unguarded chick or egg. It is a bit of a shock seeing these so close to the puffin colonies in real life, so if seeing this picture has been jarring for you, that is the point.
Sunset puffins at the Wick