Puffins

Making bird photos is not my thing.  And I have great respect for bird photographers! They need a lot of patience and BIG lenses.  Birds move quickly and unpredictably and they spook easily- it's difficult.  Yet I had fun sitting in a small dark blind with another photographer, whispering, "Oh, look at that one!" and "Did you get that shot?".
We were on Machias Seal Island Bird Sanctuary in the Gulf of Maine in early June for an afternoon of bird watching and photography.  Both Canada and the US claim sovereignity but Canada maintains a working lighthouse and researchers come to live for periods in the summer.  We took a boat tour with Captain Andy from Cutler, Maine.  The coming ashore is not always guaranteed.  It depends on how high the seas are.

   This is the island from the boat. Then it was necessary to take a smaller boat to the landing ramp which is tricky for folks with lots of gear.  Luckily the seas were calm enough and Captain Andy said it was a go.

 

We walked on boardwalks to the picnic area near the lighthouse.  Boardwalks are mandatory and still we had to watch out not to step on errant eggs as we later walked out to the blinds nestled smack dab in the middle of puffin territory!  We learned that if we were quiet and did not poke our lenses out of the windows then the puffins would come close to the blinds and you can see that they actually sit on the roofs!  We saw Atlantic Puffins, Razorbills, Common and Arctic Terns.

The puffins did come close!  This time of year they have their mating colors.  They make nests down in dark holes between the rocks and periodically check the eggs and keep them warm.  There were birds flying everywhere, skimming the surface of the water and bobbing about on the swells.

We got 45 quiet minutes in the blind to photograph.  I used my Canon 70-300mm lens.  Another photographer had a lens that zoomed to 500mm and she got great close ups.  I had to hope they would come waddling up closer, which rarely happened.  The light was very contrasty, there were shadows but, hey, we were shooting puffins!

I am still not a bird photographer but it's fun to push your limits now and again.