Thanks for sharing these. As you can see, this is a trip that @jyokota and I have been talking about for awhile. Is your sense that June and July are the best months? Looking at when you went, it seems to be prime time...how early and how late do you think their season would work to provide similar opportunities to your trip?
@taffy Thank you Taffy, yes June, July are probably your best months. They start to gather around their nesting sites around early/mid May, breed June/July and generally once the pufflings are big enough, during August normally, the whole colony can near enough vanish over night as the chicks swim out to sea.
Once thing you might keep in mind is that over here the season seems to start earlier the further south they are. Last year when I was up in the Orkney's, in the far north of Scotland, in mid July, it did not appear that the eggs had hatched. They had not yet started bringing food for the young.
Yet there were the images on 365 of the adults with beakfuls of sand eels coming ashore to feed the young from sites in Wales and England.
@markp This is such helpful information! It seems that the UK and Iceland are key places for photographing puffins, and I hadn't thought about the range of variation in the weather patterns south to north. Duh...again thanks! Just curious...do you have a favorite 'don't miss' area of those you've traveled in? @jyokota
Wonderful shot, Mark! Can't wait to see the puffins again in the summer.
@taffy there are puffins in coastal areas all around the UK but in my experience Orkney and Shetland are the best places to see them. Noss and Hermaness (Sheltand) have large colonies of puffins and gannets but first you have to get to the main island and then ferries to the smaller islands. But the reward is that you can sit on a headland and the puffins will be quite literally going in and out of their burrows right next to you. We've been there in June and there's always lots of activity from all the seabirds.
We went to Bempton Cliffs on the east coast of Yorkshire in April last year and saw quite a lot of puffins but very few when we went back in July. As a location it's easier to get to but you're not as close to them and it's very busy with visitors. If you have the time and the patience to make the journey to Shetland, in particular to the far north, to the island of Unst, I think it would be well worth the effort. They're such fab birds to photograph!
@inthecloud5 Thanks Christine -- such useful information to have -- Shetland sounds like a wonderful place to photograph these birds. How long did you spend at the site to do it justice?
@taffy We were in Shetland for 2 weeks but if you just wanted to see puffins you could probably do it in a week, allowing for travelling and weather! Let me know if you want any more detailed info, I can email if you like.
Once thing you might keep in mind is that over here the season seems to start earlier the further south they are. Last year when I was up in the Orkney's, in the far north of Scotland, in mid July, it did not appear that the eggs had hatched. They had not yet started bringing food for the young.
Yet there were the images on 365 of the adults with beakfuls of sand eels coming ashore to feed the young from sites in Wales and England.
@taffy there are puffins in coastal areas all around the UK but in my experience Orkney and Shetland are the best places to see them. Noss and Hermaness (Sheltand) have large colonies of puffins and gannets but first you have to get to the main island and then ferries to the smaller islands. But the reward is that you can sit on a headland and the puffins will be quite literally going in and out of their burrows right next to you. We've been there in June and there's always lots of activity from all the seabirds.
We went to Bempton Cliffs on the east coast of Yorkshire in April last year and saw quite a lot of puffins but very few when we went back in July. As a location it's easier to get to but you're not as close to them and it's very busy with visitors. If you have the time and the patience to make the journey to Shetland, in particular to the far north, to the island of Unst, I think it would be well worth the effort. They're such fab birds to photograph!