The Atlantic puffin, known by early whalers as the sea parrot, is arguably the most colourful and comical of Atlantic seabirds. Worldwide, there are roughly three to four million Atlantic puffins, half of which breed in Iceland, and some of Iceland’s most productive and bountiful puffin colonies occur on the cliffs of tiny Grimsey Island, 25 miles off the northern coast of the country.
Seabirds represent less than three percent of the world’s 10,000+ species of birds, but what they lack in diversity they make up in numbers. Grimsey Island straddles the Arctic Circle, and its bird cliffs feature the bountiful seabird colonies so characteristic of the Arctic. A single stretch of the island’s coastline may accommodate thousands of birds. Crowds of puffins stake their claim on the grassy upper rims, while throngs of razorbills, common murres, and black-legged kittiwakes crowd the ledges beneath them. Down below, black guillemots occupy the rocky rubble at the water’s edge. These colorful avian characters were the hot tickets on Grimsey Island this past July where I led two photography tours and sea parrots did not disappoint.
Grimsey in the summertime, like so many islands in the north Atlantic, experiences a wide range of weather conditions, sometimes within a single day. During our stay on the island, we often had cloud cover, but this helped to lessen the tonal contrast that can be a challenge when photographing puffins and razorbills with their striking black-and-white plumage. Amid stretches of cloudy weather, we also had many hours of sunshine with fluffy white clouds adding interest to the skies, as well as drizzle and rain that clung to the feathers of the birds like watery jewels. Probably the most fun photo conditions occurred when the island was buffeted by strong gusty winds. The winds greatly challenged the aerial prowess of every bird returning to the cliffs to feed their hungry chicks, and also tested our photographic skills as we tried to follow the many fast-moving feathery targets. Although the windy conditions could be frustrating at times, they also yielded dramatic flight shots of struggling seabirds captured in remarkable contortions, and puffins getting comically lashed in the face with their cargos of pencil-thin fish.
The tours were timed to coincide with the early days of baby puffin life when the adults make multiple trips to their nesting burrows with their beaks crammed with fish. This year was no exception. Mostly the parents were feeding their single young, called a puffling, mouthfuls of translucent larval sand eels. Apparently, the record number of fish in a single mouthful is 62, but most of the puffins I photographed had at most 10-15 fish.
Tiny Grimsey was a treasure trove of photographic opportunities. There were puffins nesting amid picturesque clusters of white daisies, known colloquially as sea mayweed, and photogenic Eurasian golden plovers foraging for insects in vast fields of waving yellow buttercups. Along the wave-battered shorelines we could zoom in on dozens of purple sandpipers, ruddy turnstones and sanderlings probing together in the ropey remains of decaying seaweed or focus on a mother common eider duck scavenging the floating carcass of a dead puffin. For more action we could switch to the aerial maneuvers of arctic terns as they dive-bombed puffins returning to the cliffs with mouthfuls of fish hoping to startle them into dropping one or two of their catch and stealing it for themselves.
Add to all of these experiences the daily joy of sitting atop a coastal cliff amid the energizing clamor of noisy seabirds and sharing this with friendly, like-minded travellers, then returning each day to our private guest house where we were warmly welcomed by our Icelandic hosts and served delicious home-cooked meals. Who could possibly ask for more?
