On these distant islands, the main attraction for me personally, aside from the lack of phone service and isolation, was the wildlife. Over a million seabirds call St Kilda home during the summer months, as well as the UK’s largest colony of Atlantic puffins, my favourite animal. Over 100,000 of them mainly breed and live on the island of Dùn, which is inaccessible to the general public as their eggs are left in the tall grass, meaning any walking on the island is dangerous for the newborns. The best bet for finding them on Hirta was in the north west, an hour’s hike from Village Bay to a gully called the Cambir.
For four or five hours I watched a few hundred puffins flying around my head, coming back from the ocean with fish in their mouths, entering and exiting their burrows, presumably to feed their new borns, called pufflings. I completely lost track of time and was totally in the moment, focused on taking photographs but also enjoying just watching the ‘clowns of the sea’ doing what they do to survive.
This lone puffin stood out on the cliff edge with the contrast of the lichen covered rocks and the blue ocean below. A truly wonderful few hours with the locals on their home patch.
St Kilda - A remote set of islands, with double UNESCO World Heritage status, sitting 40 miles off the west coast of Scotland. Home to a million birds, this isolated archipelago was a joy to explore and photograph in the summer of 2019.
These images hark back to an ancient time, when humans relied on their natural neighbours to survive, with their only means of sustenance the birds that call the western edges home. A raw, harsh existence that became too much for the locals - abandoned by the final 36 islanders in 1930 - it is now a haven for birds, mammals and ocean dwellers.
A unique place that I documented over five days of walking, observing and absorbing all that these wild lands could throw at me.
Precarious
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Precarious
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On these distant islands, the main attraction for me personally, aside from the lack of phone service and isolation, was the wildlife. Over a million seabirds call St Kilda home during the summer months, as well as the UK’s largest colony of Atlantic puffins, my favourite animal. Over 100,000 of them mainly breed and live on the island of Dùn, which is inaccessible to the general public as their eggs are left in the tall grass, meaning any walking on the island is dangerous for the newborns. The best bet for finding them on Hirta was in the north west, an hour’s hike from Village Bay to a gully called the Cambir.
For four or five hours I watched a few hundred puffins flying around my head, coming back from the ocean with fish in their mouths, entering and exiting their burrows, presumably to feed their new borns, called pufflings. I completely lost track of time and was totally in the moment, focused on taking photographs but also enjoying just watching the ‘clowns of the sea’ doing what they do to survive.
This lone puffin stood out on the cliff edge with the contrast of the lichen covered rocks and the blue ocean below. A truly wonderful few hours with the locals on their home patch.
St Kilda - A remote set of islands, with double UNESCO World Heritage status, sitting 40 miles off the west coast of Scotland. Home to a million birds, this isolated archipelago was a joy to explore and photograph in the summer of 2019.
These images hark back to an ancient time, when humans relied on their natural neighbours to survive, with their only means of sustenance the birds that call the western edges home. A raw, harsh existence that became too much for the locals - abandoned by the final 36 islanders in 1930 - it is now a haven for birds, mammals and ocean dwellers.
A unique place that I documented over five days of walking, observing and absorbing all that these wild lands could throw at me.