The Road Less Traveled

Nearly 20 years ago I visited Shetland and Orkney for the first time.  And fell in love with the landscape.  The windy cliffs, where you can stand and experience four seasons in an hour.  The standing stones and stone age villages, full of questions and a tangible link to people from so long ago.  It really is a magical place – one I was especially excited to revisit with my camera.

And so it was that my two good friends and I braved the threat of volcanic ash in search of birds, cliffs, and stone.  We were not disappointed.

For this post, I’ve gathered some of my favorite bird shots, to share.  Look for more photos in future posts.

Cliff Birds of Scotland

One of the amazing things about visiting the cliffs of Scotland (and Ireland, and probably many places) is how close you can get to nesting birds without disturbing them.  You get the advantage of height, a rarity in bird watching, from which to look down.

Fulmars are amazing to watch as they ride the wind currents blowing up the cliff faces.  You can watch how the shifting of their feet, the waggle of a tail helps them stay stationary relative to us landlubbers.   They’ll take a pass to look you in the eye, or hover with their butt towards you as they watch the spectacle below.

A fulmar flyby

Bird love

More birds, after the jump…

Puffins are just about the cutest bird I can think of.  It’s hard not to love them, particularly when they’re busy flirting with one another by smacking their bills together.  These burrow-nesting birds spend most of their life at sea, so there’s only a small window of opportunity to see them from shore.   Hence the mid-May trip.  I could spend the entire  month  just sitting on  the cliff watching  them.

Quite possibly my favorite photo of the entire trip. It wasn't until I was back from the field that I saw the dirt being kicked out of a burrow at the puffin in the center.

Oystercatchers are also a fun bird to watch.  The ones in Europe look different than their all-black North American counterpart, but both have the bright orange bill and feet that make them so charming (to me, at least.)  They’re actually a pretty loud bird, as well, so you can tell when they’re around just by listening.

Oystercatcher coming in for a landing

On the fence

Gannets are a curious bird – with their huge wingspan and almost pastel colored body.  They nest by the thousands on off-shore rocks, giving them a distinctive white color.  Can’t miss them.   It’s so amazing to watch them soar in lazy circles.

A relatively clean looking gannet rock

A gannet-covered arch on the outlying rocks, at the Hermaness Bird Reserve. Muckle Flugga lighthouse sits atop this set of rocks, the most northerly point in the UK.

Arctic Terns are a rare treat.  Birders (or twitchers as we’re called by folks in the UK) have to travel great distances to see these birds.  As their name implies, they live pretty far north.  Our trip was blessed with many sightings of these cute birds.  It was after seeing this one hovering in front of me as I paged through my book, relaxing on the edge of the bay at my fabulous B&B that I pulled out the camera and snapped this shot.

An arctic tern fishing

We enjoyed many other birds on our trip – Bonxies were a particularly cool one (Skuas on this side of the Atlantic), which luckily for us were not raising their young yet, or we’d have been dive-bombed mercilessly.  There are many more photos to come, so stay tuned.