Puffins galore!

How lucky were we today? VERY...…
Even though the weather was not great today, we took a chance and got up early to get tickets to Skomer as it looked like it might brighten up in the afternoon, and we were right....mainly. 
By the time the noon boat left it was a bit breezy but some nice blue skies and some sunshine - yay! 

I was absolutely in my element, surrounded by birds with a camera in my hand :))

My favourite shot of the day came when we were waiting for the return boat to arrive. I spent ages trying to capture puffins in flight and failed miserably - they are so fast and I am so slow.....!
Then we saw the research team heading towards us and this kind of spooked the crowd and they were kept taking off and landing en masse. 

There were plenty of other birds to see too - razorbills, guillemots, plenty of gulls, swallows, wheatears (which I don't think I have seen before), pipits, oystercatchers and more that I have forgotten. And we did see a very poorly manx shearwater. It had somehow found it's way out of it's burrow, which is not normal during the day as they get predated. One of the volunteers moved it off the path into the bracken, but there's not much hope for it I don't think. 

Late in the day, the wind got up and we had to wait an extra 90 minutes for our return trip as the journey was taking much longer than the normal 15 minutes. It was an interesting trip back and we all got a bit wet! Fun though - like a free rollercoaster! 

A few more traditional shots of puffins in extras. 

Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention - there are no boats running tomorrow or Friday because of the northerly wind....so, we were VERY glad we decided to get up at 6:30am and stand in the drizzle for 45 minutes to get our tickets today!!!