Puffins!

Yesterday we went to Skomer Island to see puffins. When i booked the trip back in January, I hadn’t realized how many puffins we’d see and how close they would let us get. Jan gave us a clue when she said we were going at the perfect time and that they’d be everywhere. She said we’d come back with faces sore from smiling so much.

We drove the hour (more skinny lanes and pulling over into hedges to let oncoming cars pass) to the car park and got ready to board the boat. The boat captain, Jim, was an entertainer and had trained a seagull to ride on the boat for the 15-minute trip to Skomer Island. The bird is called Tonto (the lodge attendant revealed to us that there are actually three seagulls he’s trained, all referred to as Tonto) and would alternately perch on the boat and glide above us. He joined us for the trip back and proceeded to poop on another passenger’s head and briefly land on Edwin’s head.

From the moment we stepped onto the island, we were enchanted by the puffins. They estimate there are 43,500 puffins. Though they kept their chicks in the burrows (I managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of the top of a fuzzy gray head) they were comfortable crossing paths in front of us and hanging out on the hills just a few feet from us.

Though the puffins were the stars, we saw manx sheerwaters, various gulls, oystercatchers, gannets, guillemots, and kittiwakes. Some of these nest on cliff-sides and are very noisy. I remarked that they sounded like middle school lunchtime, and then I read in the guidebook that the kittiwakes have a shrill voice and sound like children in a school playground from a distance. There you go.

After our four-hour mosey around the island, it was time to re-board the boat. I picked up a puffin Christmas ornament and a pack of puffin playing cards at the shop, feeling uplifted. Jan was not wrong.