Puffin Mania on St. George!

I fell in love during my visit on St. George Island - with Puffins!! It was love at first sight! Compared with other birds, especially those colorful ones from the tropics, puffins are really not all that beautiful. It must be their overly large orange or orange/yellow bills that attracts me. These birds have intrigued me ever since I saw my first pictures of them. But the St. George birds were the first live ones I ever saw in their breeding plumage, with the large, colorful base to their bills and their orange legs and feet. In between, they are mostly just black and white. Their common names - Horned Puffins and Tufted Puffins - are not especially noteworthy for such distinctive species, although I certainly do like the "Puffin" part. Of the two species, the Horned Puffin was my favorite to photograph.

In my first few days on the island, I was fortunate enough to get quite a few good images of these favorites, and quite near the town site. Their abundance in no way matched that of the other birds that used the cliffs for breeding/nesting sites. Most often, I had to look carefully to find them among the myriads of kittiwakes and murres that adorned the cliffs. But you would never know that fact based on a perusal of all of my photos. The hundreds - or maybe a thousand - pictures I took of Puffins were far in excess of their real abundance. Several times, after reviewing the library of photo images I had accumulated on my computer, I said to myself "No more pictures of puffins, I have more than I need already". Then the next time I walked along the cliffs and viewed a few of these unique seabirds, I would think to myself, "Why not take a few more pictures? I can always eliminate the ones that are not satisfactory." This sequence of thoughts and events happened again, and again, and again.......

Now it is time to select some of my favorite Puffin images - and that is a really difficult chore for me. If you don't agree with my selections, you can always go to my Flickr site for more options!

It is not difficult to differentiate these two species. Tufted Puffins have a row of creamy white feathers extending back over their eye and white face, with a body that is all black. Horned Puffins have a small horn-like projection above each eye, with white undersides and black feathers above. Both species were quite easy to approach when perched near the top of cliffs, and some of my pictures I took from perhaps 25-30 feet away. These birds even induced me to overcome my acrophobia and lean over cliffs to get better shots of them. In one location, I had my friend Vern hold on to my legs so that I could get in a better photo shooting position. The only disappointment I had with these birds is that I never saw any young ones. The adults nest in crevices and holes in the cliff faces and no young ventured out in the open while I was looking.

Enough with all of the chatter! Below are about a dozen of my favorites - with no interruptions from me!! Remember, you can enlarge an image by clicking on it.