A World Of Wildlife At Sea

On Tuesday July 8th, I was invited to join another department from work for a trip to the Skerries. The Skerries is a small cluster of islands about 7 miles North of my town. Only accessible via boat, well unless you are lucky enough to own a Helicopter that is.

A bit choppy on the way out, where I had to hold on to the something all the way. Despite coming from a family that have plenty of sea legs, my legs well they are like two solid posts and don’t react too well to movement. My grandfather was in the the merchant navy, my older bother and my dad have always had boats so you would have thought some of it would have come to me. Nope none of it had, in fairness I have only ever been sea sick once and that was on a very calm day, I would probably say that was due to the amount of alcohol I had the night before though.

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About a two miles from the Island, I actually seen a puffin fly pass the the boat we were on. I didn't actually believe it was a puffin, as I didn't realise they were out here. I then thought would it could have been as I seen many other birds fly by so then presumed I was mistaken.

I thought little of it then and we soon arrived as the Skerries. The first thing you notice is the amount of seals just resting there. Whichever way you looked there was a seal. Whether you looked at the rocks or at the sea there was a seal. Even had one follow us.

This Seal followed us before dissapearing below the vessel we were on.

Very large males dominated the area, that large they even made me look fit & healthy. The males were chilled out on the rocks whilst the majority of the females were in the sea.

Chilled out on the rocks, this male much larger than the females.

I soon turned my attention to the birds and wow the birds were plenty.

Not too many different species but those that were there, were there in large numbers. Anything in single numbers were hidden by the huge amount of Terns that were there. The Tern is a beautiful bird and it was hard to focus on anything other than them. Once my excitement of seeing so much wildlife calmed down I did start to focus and see more. I got two great images of this Phalacrocorax (yes I had to spell check that on more than one ocassion), Phalacrocorax is the latin word for Cormorant.

This one was missing many feathers, one had to wonder how it flew so well without many of the feathers in the wing. These two images are clickable and should open in a Lightbox window.

The Terns were very active, landing and then taking off again before I even got a chance to focus on them. I am used to focusing on flowers and bugs which are centimetres away from my lens and barely moving. Focusing on a bird, flying meters and meters away was a challenge for me. One challenge I have failed at many times on land, let alone on a boat which is constantly moving.

I managed to pull off some decent images, the lights was dropping though and I had to push my ISO up high to get the a fast enough shutter speed to capture the Terns.

Skimming across the sea looking for Sand eel.

It was great seeing Terns, capturing them was a challenge. That many of them you just didn’t know which one to focus on. I was happy to capture them flying with sand eel. I took soo many photos of them, I still haven’t been through them all.

As one flew past me, pretty close something else caught my eye. Something in the distance, so far away though way beyond the reach of my 500mm lens. That far away I really did consider weather it would be worth trying to capture them.

Them? What is it? Yes, they were Atlantic Puffin’s and they were very active, Of course I was going to try and capture them. I knew I would be able to crop in, in post production but doubted if the image would be good enough.

A Puffin in the distance, way beyond me camera reach.

I had now forgotten about everything else there and was solely fixed on the Puffins. Hoping one would come close, but yikes they are fast. Many of them carrying their supper with a beak full of sand eel.

Extremely Cropped in on this one, hence the quality of the image.

The light slowly disappearing, the sun was hidden behind cloud for almost the entire journey. I knew though it would be a while before I would see this many Puffins again so continued in hope one would come close.

The boat captain shouted, ‘is everyone ready to go’. My cry of ‘just six more hours please’, was drowed out by everyone else’s ‘Yeah, it’s been great’. My heart sunk as I knew the Puffin photos would be ok, but not close enought to be great. That is great by my standards and not that of a photographer who has been photographing birds for many years.

We left the harbour, I thought about putting the camera away to protect it from the sea. We were also heading away from the direction of the Puffins but what’s this. A Puffin returning from a different direction than the others, not only that it will be much closer than any of the other ones. This could be my chance and although in the distance it was much closer than any other I had seen. Thankfully I didn’t put the camera away and zoomed in on it.

Really can see how dull it was, with a white sky. Who Cares I got a Puffin photo

I knew straight away it would be a half decent image. Despite the white cloud sky and also knowing I would still have to crop in, I knew the crop wouldn’t be anywhere as severe as the other photos I had taken. There was only 4 of us the deck at this time, the others had retreated to the wheel house for a glass of wine.

I was asked if I wanted a drink to which I replied yes, but in a minute. Then in the distance I could see a small black spot getting larger and larger. I stood there in hope, hoping it was a puffin coming towards us. It got closer and closer and then the dissapointment set it. It was a gulimot another beautiful bird that I was about to photograph but by luck I looked towards Julie, Darren & Rachel who were talking but to the left of them was a Puffin flying along side us. The closest one had been to us. This was it, my chance to get an even better photo than the one above and here it is. Quite possibly my favourite photo of the year so far -

Although in the distance again, it was far closer to us than any other Puffin had been. With the added bonus of being against the blue sea rather than a grey sky. As soon as I seen it on the back of my camera I knew it was my favourite photo of the trip and once on the big screen, it soon became my favourite of the year.

We got back ashore and headed for food before returning for home. I can’t thank the other department enough for everything they do for me, never forgetting about me and always inviting me out. This though was one of the best trips I’ve had and will it be hard to beat. I would definitely be looking at doing it again in the future.

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Until next time take care.

A Trip to the Skerries

A World Of Wildlife At Sea

The Steam Engines