Puffins – Aren’t They Just Gorgeous?

One of the great opportunities when visiting Newfoundland in Canada is to go to Elliston on the east coast and see the nesting Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica) colony. We were there very early in the Season and these cute little birds were just arriving for their 3 months of the year on land to breed.

In fact when we arrived at our first campground in Newfoundland we could see the Witless Bay Islands Park Reserve, an island just offshore and although we had only just parked our rig we grabbed some binoculars and saw what must have been 20,000 puffins circling around the island, in the sea at the base of the island and on the side of the island facing us. It was late in the day so I said first thing tomorrow out comes the big lens and I will shoot me some puffins!

Sadly all had disappeared. The glorious, warm and sunny day that we arrived in had turned very cold and very windy. So the puffins that had just come in went back to their familiar environment – the sea!

When we visited Elliston it was sunny, but very windy. The waves were crashing on the rocks below us, the icebergs in the bay were scooting across and there were very few puffins to be seen.

However, I was very lucky to catch two male puffins having a territorial dispute. They would stand in adjacent burrows swearing at each other, fly up and bump their chests then grab each others’ beaks.

This squabble went on for about 15 minutes, then subsided for a few minutes,

then resumed.

It ended with them still entwined free falling off of the cliff and separating just before they hit the waves.

We decided to return the next afternoon to see whether more puffins had come in and were rewarded by hundreds on the top of the rock

and circling around the rock. They would take off in their pairs, circle round and land again at the same place in their pairs.

Quite a spectacle to see.

We were also lucky to see a few Black Guillemots (Cepphus grylle) arrive and tuck themselves in on the rock face.

Gear: Nikon D4s, Nikkor 600mm f/4 VRII, Nikkor TC-17 EII, RRS TVC-34L, RRS Full Gimbal Head, Lexar Digital Film.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 29th, 2019 at 11:09 am. It is filed under Birds, Color Images, Wildlife and tagged with Alcids, Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica), Black Guillemot (Cepphus grylle), Canada, Elliston, Lexar Digital Film, Newfoundland, NF, Nikkor 600mm f/4 VRII, Nikkor TC-17 EII, Nikon, Nikon Camera Systems, Nikon D4S, Nikon GP-1, Richard King Photography, RRS Full Gimbal Head, RRS TVC-34L Tripod, Wildlife bird photography, www.fulltimervingwiththekings.com, www.mothernatureimages.com, www.richardkingphoto.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.