Fernweh

We traveled to Grímsey Island off the north coast of Iceland to see the huge colonies of Puffins that nest there during the summer months. Although we are not really big bird photographers, we’ve been interested in this subject for many years. Between the beautiful, remote location – we took four flights on the outbound trip and a ferry and three flights on the return – and the photogenic and engaging birds, we were very happy to finally make it.

Grímsey

A tiny island, just 5 km^2 (2 sq miles), Grímsey is also the only part of Iceland that reaches above the Arctic Circle. There is a very small airstrip (1-2 flights a week from Akureyri), a port with a ferry terminal (a few trips a week, also from Akureyri), a restaurant open for lunch & dinner, and two or three guesthouses; we stayed in Guesthouse Básar, which was perfect for our needs.

Puffins

Inhabited by only a couple of dozen year-round residents – perhaps 50-60 people in the summer – Grímsey is home to a huge breeding colony of Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica). About 60 percent of the world’s puffins nest in Iceland and Grímsey hosts by far the largest group. No one knows exactly how many birds there are here, but there are hundreds of thousands of puffins.

Rather than making nests, the puffins dig burrows in the cliffs and deposit their eggs inside. Then the adults fly out to sea to fish for sand eels to bring back for their chicks. At times the scene is quite loud and chaotic with hundreds of birds circling around, deciding whether or not to land, while many others sit on the cliffs watching from beside their burrows.

Interestingly, the puffins do not always go immediately back into their burrows when they return from a fishing trip, so you frequently see birds just standing around with a mouthful of fish.

Somewhat like penguins, the puffins seem to have a lot of personality and are easy to anthropomorphize. They stand around, waddle here and there, occasionally stare right at you, either straight ahead or out of the corner of their eye.

While not as hard to shoot as small songbirds, as they don’t move very erratically, the puffins do fly extremely fast. It’s a fun challenge to track them as they zoom across the little bays and look for a spot to land.

Sometimes they end up flying right at you and seem to use their feet as flaps to slow down to land.

Because we visited in late June, and due to Grímsey’s location on the Arctic Circle, we got to experience the midnight sun. What this meant was that you could go out and shoot almost any time, day or night. At midnight, it felt that we had the world almost to ourselves, the puffins, and a small handful of other crazy photographers who made the trek to experience this amazing place.