The Star Of Bird Islands
June 19th, 2015
The Bird Islands are two rocky islets offshore of Cape Breton, blanketed in colonies of nesting seabirds. We chose Donelda's Puffin Boat Tours to take us there and had a great time. They go as close to the islands as possible, giving you good views (with binoculars) of the razorbills, guillemots, puffins, cormorants and kittiwakes. The extra megapixels on my new camera really strutted their stuff that day. "As close as possible" really wasn't all that close, and I was surprised when some of my photographs, once cropped, looked as if I'd been standing on the island right next to the birds!
The puffins--"chunky little sea parrots", as Peterson calls them--are the ostensible stars of the show. In truth I enjoyed the other seabirds just as much, but Atlantic Puffin was a lifer for me (one of my four this trip), and I was excited to see and photograph it. Puffins are part of the auk family, the north hemisphere's analogue to penguins. They eat small fish which they catch by diving and swimming underwater. They are renowned for their ability to carry dozens of fish at a time in their oversized bills when bringing food back to the nest. (Apparently the known record is 62!)
The puffins were both less numerous and less obvious than the other seabirds, nesting as they did in little hollows on the rock faces (instead of out in the open.) I only managed to photograph them on the water.
1680x1050 wallpaper
Puffins aren't very good fliers. Auks in general aren't very good fliers: to quote Wikipedia, they are a compromise between the best possible design for diving and the bare minimum needed for flying. (This still puts them a step past penguins whose "compromise" was to give up flying entirely.) They have to patter furiously across the water into the wind to achieve liftoff.
June 19th, 2015
The Bird Islands are two rocky islets offshore of Cape Breton, blanketed in colonies of nesting seabirds. We chose Donelda's Puffin Boat Tours to take us there and had a great time. They go as close to the islands as possible, giving you good views (with binoculars) of the razorbills, guillemots, puffins, cormorants and kittiwakes. The extra megapixels on my new camera really strutted their stuff that day. "As close as possible" really wasn't all that close, and I was surprised when some of my photographs, once cropped, looked as if I'd been standing on the island right next to the birds!
The puffins--"chunky little sea parrots", as Peterson calls them--are the ostensible stars of the show. In truth I enjoyed the other seabirds just as much, but Atlantic Puffin was a lifer for me (one of my four this trip), and I was excited to see and photograph it. Puffins are part of the auk family, the north hemisphere's analogue to penguins. They eat small fish which they catch by diving and swimming underwater. They are renowned for their ability to carry dozens of fish at a time in their oversized bills when bringing food back to the nest. (Apparently the known record is 62!)
The puffins were both less numerous and less obvious than the other seabirds, nesting as they did in little hollows on the rock faces (instead of out in the open.) I only managed to photograph them on the water.
1680x1050 wallpaper
Puffins aren't very good fliers. Auks in general aren't very good fliers: to quote Wikipedia, they are a compromise between the best possible design for diving and the bare minimum needed for flying. (This still puts them a step past penguins whose "compromise" was to give up flying entirely.) They have to patter furiously across the water into the wind to achieve liftoff.
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dagibbs
June 19th, 2015 at 10:05 am
Loons suffer from some of the similar compromise problems between flying and swimming -- I see them running across the water to take-off as well.
Mike
June 19th, 2015 at 11:50 am
Very nice shots... I like the intent look when they're flying. The pictures show more than I was able to see IRL, too!
The second one is a great background pic, too!
guruwench
June 19th, 2015 at 01:01 pm
Puffins! They're lovely. :D