Puff(in)ed Out

Yay! A boat trip that worked out!

After the disappointment of the Bass Rock (non) landing at the start of the month we headed to Northumberland this morning, to Seahouses, for a trip to Staple Island where around 35,000 pairs of Puffins nest (as well as thousands of Guillemots and hundreds of Cormorants). And none of them let us down.

The Puffins were the stars, but getting so close to all of these birds was a privilege. I really can't wait to get this close to the Gannets on Bass Rock on our re-arranged August trip now... Except maybe for the smell... Mmmm, fishy bird poo...

There's a small set of photos on Flickr, I'm particularly pleased with some of the flying Puffin shots, but really there was no way you could come off the island without good pictures (I chose this one cos the Puffin really pops out from the background). This was a quick run through 300 photos to whittle down to 30 in the set.

And I'm getting the hang of the new D90. 90% of the shots were untouched after coming out of the camera. The others only had some minor contrast, brightness and saturation changes.

Home via Flodden Field and a walk around the battlefield, wondering at the fact that in this non-descript part of the country around 14,000 men died in a matter of a couple of hours in up-close hand-to-hand combat (for the most part - artillery played its part as well).

Cracking day that will be set off perfectly with a few beers and nibbles, having cleaned out the chicken houses. A rest well-earned. Well and truly puff(in)ed out...