Puffins

Puffins, Isle of May, Scotland

At the end of April 2018 I took a trip out to the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh.

The puffins were due to arrive back on their island but bad weather had kept them away. We were lucky that the weather on that day was beautiful and the puffins all returned together en masse.

Thousands of puffins wheeled around the skies, circling in huge spiraling blizzards of black and white, furiously flapping and shooting across the rocks. Returning to find their nesting burrows and reunite with their partners.

These long lived birds can live for thirty years or more and mate for life. A few arguments over territory are settled in the first few days, one of which you can see captured here, and then the birds settle down to raise and feed their chicks before leaving again in early August to head out to roam the North Atlantic for another year.