After spending a lot of time this week watching Puffins I have spotted some of their behaviours. They spend most of their lives at sea and are designed for that. They need to come ashore to breed and look comical and ungainly on land. Their flying skills could also do with improvement. A nice flat grassy clifftop is not such a problem, but I couldn't tell you how many times I have watched an approaching Puffin coming into a steep rocky cliff and getting the landing wrong, leaving its scrabbling to gain purchase on the rocks before giving up and dropping away and having to circle around for another attempt. I have also seen quite a lot just getting it totally wrong, basically just flying straight into the cliff face and bouncing back off like a tennis ball. I never saw any get injured doing this though.
Take off is also interesting. Like the one on the left, they get to the edge of the ledge. Then they bow down, head first and sort of aim themselves at the rocks or sea beneath them. They seem to stand like that, sometimes for quite a while, as though they are plucking up the courage to throw themselves off into the abyss.
When they finally, you can't really describe it as leaping, fall off is better, they just appear to plummet downwards, and just before they hit whatever is below them, start flapping, and fly low across the sea.
@jyokota@taffy Thank you very much Junko, for all your lovely comments on my photographs. Looks like you had a very good look around, and to be honest I hadn't looked at many of these recently and it brought back some nice memories.
There are many places in the UK where you can see Puffins, some better than others. At a few you can get very close to them, but some of the more easily accessible can get busy with people . They are cute looking creatures with their own silly behaviours, and some are right characters.
Your comment about 300mm, most my Sony's have a inbuilt digital teleconverter in, so some of my images might actually have been taken from further away than you might think. However, get in the right places, and a 200, 300 or even shorter lens is fine for these.
If you need any more information let me know.
PS. Posted two more Puffins from the summer today, these are from Orkney.
@markp -- Yes, I did have a good look around your project and couldn't believe I hadn't been following you since we've both been on 365 the same years, beginning in 2013. I so thoroughly enjoyed the backwards look. And all this, inspired by the Flashback Friday post! I love looking back at my own project as a "visual diary" and when I skip weeks and even months I'm sad when I go back later and there are so many holes. Visual images stir such memories in our souls. Thanks for all the tips on Puffin photography. As you can see, we are SERIOUS about visiting them! My longest lens is the 100-400 so maybe I will need to get a teleconverter whereas Taffy has the one that goes to 600.
January 13th, 2018
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There are many places in the UK where you can see Puffins, some better than others. At a few you can get very close to them, but some of the more easily accessible can get busy with people . They are cute looking creatures with their own silly behaviours, and some are right characters.
Your comment about 300mm, most my Sony's have a inbuilt digital teleconverter in, so some of my images might actually have been taken from further away than you might think. However, get in the right places, and a 200, 300 or even shorter lens is fine for these.
If you need any more information let me know.
PS. Posted two more Puffins from the summer today, these are from Orkney.