Foggy House in Maberly

 House in Maberly / 10x10

WHILE CAROL AND I are in Elliston, looking at the breath-taking scenery, she spots a line of cars in the distance, parked along a road.

"I bet that's where the puffins are," she says, and we head off in that direction.

Earlier in the trip, a man has told us about a place near Elliston where you walk out on a rocky path and can see puffins on a small island cliff just across a bit of water from the cliff where you end up.

Sure enough, this is the spot. We make our way along the path, past great root cellars, across a narrow land bridge and up over a rocky bluff, and there, not close, really, but not so very far away, are hundreds and hundreds of puffins.

I wish I had brought a better camera, but I didn't, and so my puffin photos are smaller and blurrier than I'd like, but I hope you can get the sense of them and their cliff home.

Puffins are seabirds who dive for fish. You can see in the photo that they can carry a bunch of fish all at the same time.

We watch them launch themselves off their cliff island. They pretty much walk - or even run - to the edge and throw themselves off. On land, they are round and waddly. In the air, their bodies curve in small arcs and their wings spread out straight behind them. They flap their wings and fly very fast, looking for all the world like they are swimming in the air.
They dive right in to catch their fish, then bring their haul up to the rocky island. We watch as they land and then run into burrows with their catch, while other puffins chase after them. According to Audubon Project Puffin, the birds loosen the soil with their beaks, then dig it out with their feet.

Puffin burrows are usually 2 to 3 feet long, with a feathered nest at the end, and a waste area at the first bend in the burrow. The baby puffin - they lay one egg a year - will use this area for excrement, so it doesn't soil its feathers. If the chick gets too dirty, its feather-waterproofing might be compromised, which would be fatal.

The puffins we see are Atlantic puffins, the only type native to the Atlantic Ocean. The colony we watch might be 100 or more, it's hard to tell. While we are watching, other people, and families come to watch. A couple photographers with incredibly long lenses are out there, too. One father and his kids are so close to the edge of the cliff, I can hardly look at them.

We watch the puffins with total fascination for a long time. If we didn't have to continue our journey, we might still be there now.

Above and below, the puffin colony on its rocky home. In the photo below, you can see a puffin in mid-flight, blurry but visible, in the bottom right corner of the shot. 

Horrifyingly close to the edge, in my opinion. 

Above and below, the path we walk to see the puffins

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Dog of the Day

We meet this guy in Witless Bay. He is a little witless, as in the way of the friendliest of goldens. The lady with him is his doggy grandmother, and she is spoiling him as much as any grandmother spoiled a two-footed grandchild. 

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A Final Thought

"Don't tell me how educated you are. Tell me how much you have traveled." 

- the prophet Mohamad (or maybe not)