Puffin | esterspears

Browsing All posts tagged under »Puffin«

Fleeting flight of the Auks

July 9, 2025

Photographing Puffins in flight can be frustrating; the birds are small and fast, making framing difficult. They flap their wings that are more suited to ‘swimming’ underwater – faster than flying, at up to 400 times a minute – not as fast as a Hummingbird granted, but still requiring a fast shutter speed to freeze […]

Hot Hanmers

July 8, 2025

Lundy time: Joon 2025. We were gutted to hear that our week’s stay in Tibbetts was cancelled due to problems with the new waterpump installation (Tibbetts has its own Well and the quaint but outdated battery waterpump was being upgraded). Instead we were offered Hanmers, a corrugated iron and timber hut built in 1898 by […]

Puffins in the Pinks

May 19, 2025

Once more to Lundy Island, this time on a day trip from Bideford. It is an early start to coincide with the high tide, but the bonus is that you get extra hours on the island as the return journey has to align with the next high tide so that the boat can navigate the […]

Rainy Day on May

May 10, 2025

The Isle of May, off the Fife coast, is a national nature reserve and home to over 100,000 puffins during the breeding season; which runs from April til June. This small island which has a tremendous variety of wildlife, renowned for its rich bird life, seals and reefs, also has an interesting religious and maritime […]

Calendar debrief

May 5, 2025

Thank you to all who bought the 2025 Calendar and for your continued support on my calendar journey with another sell out. I am a bit late with my usual blog about some of the stories behind the photos that made the 5th edition of the Beautiful North Devon Calendar. Let’s jump straight into it […]

Waving at the Waverley

June 18, 2024

The paddle steamer Waverley was built on the Clyde and launched in 1946, as a cruise ship to take day trippers through the Scottish lochs. By 1973 she was the last seagoing paddle steamer in the world and due for retirement but in a magnificent leap of faith was sold by the owners ( Caledonian […]

Puffins Galore

June 11, 2024

When everything else in life is going tits up, it’s nice to be able to report a heart warming success story from our very shores across the water at Lundy Island. Back at the turn of this century when everyone else was worrying about a non-existent ‘millennium bug” and dancing to Britany Spears (no relation), […]

Lundy Summer Seabirds

July 3, 2023

LSS (Splitters!). I’ve been lucky enough to have my second stay in Tibbetts this year, and on a hot week in June, it was a joy; not only as a mid season break from work but to test the XT-5 and it’s new auto-focus algorithms – especially on the seabirds population. It’s not all about […]

Return to Duncansby Head

June 1, 2022

I’ve been coming up to Caithness since the eighties, almost annually for a surf and more recently for photography and wildlife as part of my job to contribute to the Judging team at the Scottish Surf Championships. It was only recently I stumbled upon the the of the area around Duncansby head, the cliffs, the […]

Pink Lundy

May 31, 2021

Lundy in the unseasonably cold month of May and it’s full of the bells, the blue bells (as witnessed in the previous post) but not just them. There is also another harbinger of summer; the iconic coast-path flower, sea thrift, the prettiest pink ever. Also known as sea pinks, or the cliff rose, cushion pinks, sea […]