I’m just back from a week on Skokholm, an island just off the Pembrokeshire coast. If you haven’t been you should- it is one of the beautiful wildlife spots in the UK. It’s noted for the number of nesting seabirds, the most familiar resident is pictured below.

Making reliable estimates of the number of Atlantic puffins on the island is tricky ; the photograph below shows why. This is the area christened Puffin Town by the most famous resident of the island, Ronald Lockley who moved here to farm in 1927.

Here is another photo from the same shot in foul weather.I’ve run this through the Oil paint filter to give it a bit of atmosphere. It was blowing a howling gale when I shot this; the same gale that lasted for three days and kept me on the island as the boat couldn’t land.

This is an incredible place with the constant noise of the puffins as they fly in and out feeding in the crashing waves and returning to their burrows.

Fortunately the weather picked up and I was able to get some better shots.

I had some fine company for the week and there were several of us trying for that elusive perfect puffin flight shot. This is one of my better efforts. Puffins fly like minature torpedos and are hard to catch in sharp focus particularly shooting handheld as I was. I’ve been experimenting with an old Nikon Pistol Grip that I picked up secondhand.