Precarious

On these distant islands, the main attraction for me personally, aside from the lack of phone service and isolation, was the wildlife. Over a million seabirds call St Kilda home during the summer months, as well as the UK’s largest colony of Atlantic puffins, my favourite animal. Over 100,000 of them mainly breed and live on the island of Dùn, which is inaccessible to the general public as their eggs are left in the tall grass, meaning any walking on the island is dangerous for the newborns. The best bet for finding them on Hirta was in the north west, an hour’s hike from Village Bay to a gully called the Cambir.

For four or five hours I watched a few hundred puffins flying around my head, coming back from the ocean with fish in their mouths, entering and exiting their burrows, presumably to feed their new borns, called pufflings. I completely lost track of time and was totally in the moment, focused on taking photographs but also enjoying just watching the ‘clowns of the sea’ doing what they do to survive.

This lone puffin stood out on the cliff edge with the contrast of the lichen covered rocks and the blue ocean below. A truly wonderful few hours with the locals on their home patch.