All week our tour guides had been lowering our expectations for puffin sightings. It is late in the season, most of the puffins will be gone back out onto the ocean where they improbably lead their lives. It was definitely with a sense of foreboding that I dragged myself from bed in preparation for the journey to Mykines.
Mykines is one of the most westerly of the Faroes Islands giving puffins easy access to the open sea. We had to drive to Vagur and then hop on a quite small boat for a slightly bouncy trip out to sea.
The island of Mykines is quite small. One doesn’t realise at first glance how small. There is a tiny harbour and steps that lead up to the obligatory picturesque village. Behind the village the land rises to a ridge. And that’s it. On the other side of the ridge is the ocean which can be conveniently accessed by losing your balance and plummeting to your death.
Along the aforementioned ridge seabirds nest. Gannets, fulmars, skuas and if the whim takes them, puffins. The whim takes the puffins each breeding season as they seek a home where their egg won’t immediately sink to the bottom of the sea. Once the product of said egg is more or less functional they have no reason to stick around.
Birds there were aplenty as we made the climb. Even the occasional puffin teased us by flying past too distant for a decent photo. Puffins don’t hang elegantly in the air like other seabirds incidentally. They barrel through the sky like miniature torpedoes, wings threshing like mad. By the time you see them they’re gone. I reluctantly accepted that this would be the closest I would come to a puffin. I traipsed along the cliff top glumly when suddenly there was a puffin directly in front of me. My girlish squeal frightened it away but fortunately others were made of sterner stuff. I photographed and gurgled in delight in about equal quantities as puffins posed for photos, landed in the grass in front of me and generally behaved like extras in a David Attenborough documentary. And just when I thought I was satiated with puffins suddenly there were more and I went into avian induced ecstasies once more. We walked the length of the ridge, snobbishly ignoring the other birds that desperately tried to attract our attention. Finally when we could take no more we repaired to the tiny village for seafood soup. Carrot soup was provided for those of us with a fish issue.
On the journey home the sea was a little rougher (ie still pretty calm for the Atlantic Ocean). We clutched desperately to convenient pieces of boat. Meanwhile our guide, a former sailor, stood unaided on the deck despite knee braces and a walking stick and wondered what all of the fuss was about.
This was a near perfect end to my trip. My puffin cup runneth over and with the Faroes well and truly visited I could leave happy. The only thing that could have made it better is if I had seen a whale but if I had I would probably also have had to watch as my guide ran it ashore and killed it.
No comments:
Post a Comment