England – Farne Islands [1]

Sutton, 28 Jun 2009

Part of this UK trip was to go to Durham with our daughter, son-in-law and 3-week-old grand-daughter to introduce my father to his first great-grandchild. To this end we had booked a cottage for a few days in upper Weardale, but true to form I made the most of where we were to fit in a day trip to the Farne Islands to see nesting puffins – a tick on my personal ‘Birding Bucket List’.

I was certainly not disappointed with the day’s outing, which began at the harbour in Seahouses, where I started the day’s list with European Herring Gull, Black-headed Gull and Eurasian Oystercatcher. The boat ride out to the islands from Seahouses was a pleasure on a millpond sea under a blazing sun. The thousands of puffins were hugely entertaining on both Staple Island and Inner Farne. The Arctic Terns divebombing me and my fellow visitors on Inner Farne, pecking at the tops of our heads, was also quite an experience, but I think for me the sight of the day was flying guillemots. These birds reminded me of the African Penguins I have seen around the Cape Peninsula, back home in South Africa. They are most definitely not designed for flight and seem to challenge all the laws of aerodynamics!

Bird of the day for me was surprisingly not the puffin, as I might have expected it to be, but the Northern Fulmar, a single pair among the milling mass of tens of thousands of Atlantic Puffin, Common Murre (guillemot), Razorbill, European Shag, terns (Arctic and Sandwich) and Black-legged Kittiwake. Both European Herring Gull and Lesser Black-backed Gull were also to be seen.