The pictures of the puffin were obviously not taken in Poland. The way digital photography gives you vast possibilities, the same way cheap airlines encourage you to such „puffin escapades”. A round-trip ticket from Poznan to Edinburgh for a couple of zlotys sounds reasonable for a weekend trip. Then about one hour train ride to Berwick upon Tweed, and then, unfortunately by taxi, to a mini port, from which you can already see the islands inhabited by puffins, cormorants and guillemots. A short cruise and you can step onto an island that is a real bird paradise. Such a number of almost tamed birds in one place looks impressive. Observing the flights of puffins approaching you with some fish in their beaks makes you think, how agile they must be while hunting in the water. Then they suddenly land on the grass, and after a moment disappear in a hole hidden behind the grass. You don’t need long lenses there. All the pictures presented here were taken with a 70-200/2.8 lenses. Beginners take photos with their cell phones…. There’s some magic in the eyes of this bird. The color of its plumage and beak combined with its behavior make a unique composition, and the puffin creates a category by itself, just like the hoopoe or the normal kingfisher does. Puffins are relatively small birds. Their weight is about 0.5 kg, with a wingspan of approximately 0.5 m. When I was visiting the bird island, I saw a flock of… gannets flying over my head. Unfortunately everything lasted just a few seconds, so I won’t present any pictures of this species this time. I encourage you to take an opportunity to watch a whole colony of puffins, for the time being I give you a link, which is worth exchanging for personal experience.
Here’s a link to some video about puffins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcsJ-xfl0oU&feature=related
Last minute news 06-2014-Iceland
Leaving Iceland without seeing puffin it is like to be in Africa and not see an elephant. When visiting Iceland you can see everywhere postcards of puffins, puffins mascots and other souvenirs showing charm of this fabulously colored bird, not to be mistaken for any other species. The population of puffins in Iceland is said to be counted in millions of individuals. Unfortunately, these large colonies are often in inaccessible places or just on a small uninhabited islands. This time my contact with this species was not as close as in Scotland, as I watched the birds from a boat, from a distance of a dozen - a few dozen meters. Unstable boat made it difficult to take pictures, neither the weather was favorable. However, there were hundreds of puffins, if not thousands, and the most difficult was to decide and choose the one to capture in a dynamic picture. The view of a colony of these birds is really extraordinary and every opportunity should be taken to observe these birds. There have been changes in the gallery, but because the images put earlier were of good quality, there is no need to reconstruct the gallery, I have just added new photos from Iceland at the end.
Last minute news 06/2015
This has been my third encounter with this bird species. The first one was the most fruitful one. This time although there were hundreds of birds, if not thousands, the distance was always quite substantial. Nevertheless I managed to take some pictures of whole colonies of Atlantic puffins as well as a few dynamic shots of the birds in flight.
Last minute news 07/2018 - Svalbard-Norvey
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