It’s 11:30pm when the plane tyres touchdown on the tarmac. The airport buildings are illuminated by the deep orange glow of the midnight sun, dipping below the horizon. The following morning, both myself and wildlife-filmmaker Ed Towler, head out early to meet with the small team of researchers in Reykjavik. We’d be joining them for 2 weeks on a Seabird research expedition, affectionately named the ‘Puffin Rally’. Each year, the South Icelandic Nature Research Centre, led by Dr. Erpur Hansen, monitor several key Puffin colonies, to monitor their population across Iceland.
We’d join them as research assistants and our primary purpose would be to photograph adult Puffins carrying food back to their chicks. The team would use our images to determine which prey items the adults were feeding to their chicks, and if this impacted their survival rate. Our journey would involve driving in an anticlockwise loop around Iceland, exploring some of the most inaccessible seabird colonies and remote locations along the way. There were bound to be some surprises in store…
Northwest
Our journey began heading Northwest, with our first research stop on the island of Flatey in the Breiðafjörður bay. I was eager to give my Leica 10×42 Noctivids their first proper test on foreign ground. On a brief ferry crossing I began scanning the horizon. It didn’t take long before a small pod of charming White-beaked Dolphins came into view. I picked them out easily in some high contrast light, as their dark forms broke the surface, with energetic leaps and powerful bursts of acceleration. A brief stop at our first Puffin colony revealed a mix of incredible species in the locality. They included both Red-Necked and Grey Phalaropes, as well as numerous Snow Buntings, which seemed to nest exclusively in peoples’ gardens!
A poor breeding year at this Puffin colony meant that our photographic research was cut short, with very few Puffins flying past us with food for their chicks. We made it back to the local port and continued north into the scenic Westfjords, where the second colony was waiting.
The island of Vigur is not only a haven for birds, but for visitors too. A 19th century windmill sits proudly near the dock, whilst traditional Icelandic farm buildings add splashes of colour to this picturesque island. An overnight campout followed by an early start saw us photographing an abundance of food carrying Puffins. We watched as they flew along the cliffs in strong winds, with beaks full of Sand Eel and Herring. I would use my binoculars to locate and focus on the birds with food, calling them out to Ed who would photograph them, ignoring birds with no food. The responsive focusing wheel on the Noctivids proved very useful, as I switched between birds flying in at close range as well as distant ones. This improved our success rate with the research photographs, as we didn’t have to capture every individual bird to check whether it was carrying fish.
After capturing dozens of food-carrying Puffins, we turned our attention to the other bird species on Vigur. The island is famous for its Eider duck colonies, which produce a natural insulator known as eiderdown. I perched myself on a sheltered beach whilst waiting for the boat to return us to the mainland. Female Eiders flew back and forth, occasionally landing in the shallows to converse with their associates with characteristic cooing calls.
As we loaded everything onto the boat, comical Black Guillemots poked their heads out of the dry-stone walls, before furiously flapping out to sea on foraging trips, returning with sizeable Butterfish. Soon, it was time for us to head east.
