Farne Islands – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Those Lucky Shots

You know the sort of day. When things just go right. When, perhaps unexpectedly, you have your camera with you just when one of the flighty, nervy Neighbourhood Squirrels is posing nicely, as ours was one day last week.

When, camera in hand, you manage to point-and-shoot at just the right moment. These images come from a long-past day in the Farne Islands when the Arctic Terns, frantic to protect their young, wheeled and dive-bombed overhead, giving chance after chance for action-packed shots even to a strictly amateur type like me. We had no idea where their nests and babies were and certainly weren’t going to go looking.

There were those red squirrels in Málaga, who managed to forget me for just long enough for me to whip my camera out …

Or that heron in Córdoba. It wasn’t so much the heron I was afraid of losing, as this collage of evening light.

Sofia, of Photographias fame wants us to showcase those moments for this week’s Lens Artists Challenge: Lucky Shot. Thanks Sofia, for helping us remember those joyful lucky seconds.

Birds of Britain x 7

Bird photography isn’t something I excel at. No long lenses, no patience. But today, just so I can join in three whole challenges listed below, I offer you seven images. Not seven birds, please note. Just seven images.

My feature photo is of an egret and a heron studiously ignoring one another at our local nature reserve.

And my next is of a herring gull. Doubtless it’s a mug shot of him taken at the police station, as he helps police with their enquiries over the matter of the fish and chips snatched from a blameless pensioner eating his take-away fish dinner on the seafront.

The next two are familiar local residents: a robin posing for a Christmas card: and a house sparrow in reflective mood.

Back to the seaside. To the Farne Islands. Here is a puffin stretching his wings: and an irritated Arctic tern objecting to my possibly disturbing his young.

We’ll end where we (nearly) began: with two birds – cormorants in this case, ignoring one another at another local nature reserve.

For Becky’s Seven for September.

And Leanne and Elke‘s Monochrome Madness #16.

And IJ Khanewala’s Bird of the Week.

More from the Farne Islands

So many kinds of sea bird…

#Kinda Square

An altercation in the Farne Islands

‘I don’t take kindly to your tramping so near to my nest and my fledglings. Kindly desist’

‘We’re only here to take photos. We’re birdwatchers – kind of – and we’re only here for a couple of hours’.

‘We’ve met your kind before. Go away or I’ll peck a hole in your hat!’

‘That’s unkind. We’re kindred spirits here. We love the Farne Islands too. All you Arctic terns, thousands and thousands of you. And so many other kinds of bird too’

‘Frankly, you kindle nothing but feelings of irritation and annoyance. Just … go away.’

#Kinda Square

Six Word Saturday

Snapshot Saturday: My focus – an Arctic tern: its focus? Me.

In my mind, I’m still on the Farne Islands.

This Arctic tern is directing its focus on me: am I a threat to her (his?) young?

I’m directing my focus on it. Will it make a good picture?

It’s all so quick. My shot’s a bit out of focus, and the wings are partly out of shot. But the clouds make a pretty decent frame.

So this might work for this week’s WordPress photo challenge: Focus.

In which I am attacked by a tern, charmed by some puffins, and visit a nursery.

Tuesday. A trip round the Farne Islands.

Following the fish, birds feeding off the Farne Islands.

Here’s our journey, courtesy of Billy Shiel’s boat. We pass one of the most densely populated housing estates in Europe – but despite having to jostle for a tiny space to call home, this community is not socially well-integrated . Kittiwakes don’t live with puffins. Cormorants won’t talk to guillemots. Grey seals loll indolently beneath the cliffs, doing as little as possible till hunger forces them into the sea to hunt. The stench is intolerable.

We land on Inner Farne, taking our hats as per instructions. This is why. Arctic terns nest all over the island and they have young to protect. We are the enemy, as they make clear, as they hurtle towards us, piercing our hats and hands with their dagger-like beaks. I nurse a war-wound on my finger.

We decide puffins are less bellicose. They waddle about among the undergrowth, occasionally pottering down into their burrows.

Puffin at rest.

Exercising wings

Watching from a burrow

Then it’s time to explore further. The cliffs are cordoned off, but there, immediately beyond the fencing are birds in their hundreds, caring for their young. They’re close enough to touch. We don’t though. Being so close we can see every detail of their (usually ramshackle) nests, their plumage, the young unfledged birds, and this is privilege enough.

Eider ducklings.

A cormorant and young.

An adult cormorant spreads its glossy wings

You can’t spot the kittiwake young in this shot, but they’re tucked underneath, honest.

A razorbill protects her young.

A cormorant nest – with lots of other nests nearby.

With thanks to Maureen and Andrew for organising this trip for volunteers at NT Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, and to the volunteer rangers at NT Farne Islands for managing this special place, despite irreparable damage to their hats.