Taexalia

wild.life

Puffling Hunting

Bass Rock Firth of Forth

10am saw the arrival of the Parental Units and the Prodigal Sister (mine this week). Yes, there was a reason for the busy-busy Saturday - parental visits in quick succession are great for the zen quality of my home.

After cups of tea, some practical joking (PaternalUnit) and various gifts exchanges (none of which were to do with ageing) it was decided that we would introduce Prod to the delights of North Berwick. Time constraints meant we took the big road, rather than the much lovelier coastal route, and we arrived under the shadow of North Berwick Law in good time.

I love visiting North Berwick and I don't do it often enough - just standing on the beach gaping out at the vista that is the Firth of Forth is enough, never mind the long beaches, beastie filled rock pools, cliff walks and fine ice-cream. From the beach you can see several islands -

The Bass Rock, Craigleith, Fidra and the Isle of May. The most obviously spectacular is the Bass Rock, with its eerie white veil created by 140,000 Atlantic Gannets.

You can get a closer look if you drop in to the Scottish Seabird Centre and visit their Discovery Centre. We seem to do this each time the Units descend from Aberdeen, and we are never disappointed. Today I got a lovely surprise as PaternalUnit presented us with a year's joint membership - so now I have a good reason to hop on the train more often :)

There are remote cameras on all these islands, and there are several new cameras since the last time we visited - these allow you to explore the islands and the bird cities close up. It's magical. Now - we have visited several times at varying points of the calendar and always been impressed, but one or two things have eluded us. The prime one being a Puffin.

So, Mum and I were standing wiggling the Craigleith camera searching for a Puffin when one of the centre guides walked a couple over to the camera explaining,

"There are 70, 000 Puffins on Craigleith just now."

Mum and I looked at him and then at our big screen of cliff grass and Mum said,

"Well could you find us one then?"

With a deft twirl of the nobs, the young show-off zoned right in on two Puffins and we oooohed and aaaahed in appreciation. I was about to quip "Well that's 2 down only 69,998 to go." when he twiddled with the camera again and found us a Puffin with a bunch of sand eels in it's gob pondering the wisdom of going into the burrow and sacrificing the catch to the growing Puffling. He wandered off and suddenly there were Puffins everywhere! (no visible Pufflings tho)

Then we went to see the cameras on the Bass Rock and were overjoyed to get a bird's eye view (just had to really) of the young Gannets. They are all fluffy and comical and we have never been there at the right time to see the youngsters. So a worthwhile trip all around.

Since @ missed all the excitement because of employment, I'm taking him out there on Thursday cos now we get in for FREE!

We rounded the afternoon off with a wander along the beach and I got caught up in photographing waves. I was trying to capture the moment the swell turns to white horses, or I suppose you could say the tipping point...

Wave Tipping Point

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Posted on July 22, 2007 in Birds, Landscape, Photography, Scotland.

One Response to “Puffling Hunting”

  1. Audrey says:
    July 24, 2007 at 12:08 am

    Just popping in from Mousie’s to say Hi, miss you, and yes the kettle boiling.

    Beautiful photographs Taexalia, what a delightful place, I may just pay a visit someday.

    Reading some of your past posts, you have a great blog here, just had to laugh at the Aberdeen seagull, has he made it onto youtube yet..lol

    Keep well and enjoy your time in New Hampshire xx Diamond

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