We left Dublin early on Saturday to get to the Saltee islands:

Saltee islands

The weather wasn’t great: fog and clouds and we weren’t particularly optimistic for the day.

Kilmore Quay, not a great morning as far as weather goes…

Land ho!

The clouds covered the sky almost all morning, until we got onto the islands.

Once we arrive though, the sun decided to show up and we had a beautiful (mostly) sunny day.

A beautiful sunny day

I admit I was afraid I couldn’t do much to get the birds and that they’d be too far away for my lenses… It turns out we could get within a few metres from them, we could almost touch them!

And there were so many…

So many birds… at least the story was different from the movie…

Good day, a few good photos 🙂

Nests… To give you an idea of how close we were, I shot this with a 35mm equivalent…

Blue skies

Youth

So. Many. Birds.

The group

Watching the nests

Gannet

That eye… We almost walked into this guy’s nest… ^_^;

The walk

Field of dreams

On the high rock

Watching the sea

The sentinel

So cute…

A little rest befor going back

Ready to go back

Goodbye birdies!

On the way back

Back on the mainland, harbour

Still, there is something I don’t understand:

Why do puffins look so sad? 😦