Saltee tales III

Saltee wasn't just about gannets for me, and my favourite image actually wasn't of a gannet. 
I tried to snap the pair of choughs, which messed me about and produced at best an image that made Chris Gomersall laugh!  So you'll need to wait for the blogs from the second part of the trip to see one of them.
One of my favourite birds looks-wise is the razorbill.  A sort of steam-punk penguin I always feel they look like they are spoiling for a scrap, in a chin-jutting 'give me your best shot' kind of way. 

We had one loner who favoured some boulders just below us, posing against the waves crashing onto the rocks.  Having looked at these shots from the first day on the second I did spend some time messing about with apertures to try and get a better depth of field, but in truth it needed a wide angle lens, a closer camera position and most probably a remote trigger to get the picture I had in mind.  And I need to learn how to get the bird to flap just as the wave hits the rocks.

My favourite picture from Saltee (at present - it may change when I look back in a few months) was none of these, but a shot looking down on a flying shag. I took quite a lot of shots of various birds flying over the breaking waves below us but here I like the bird's form and the almost monochrome feel apart from that hint of aquamarine in the bottom left.  The raw power break of the wave was just right, my only regret being the clipped rocks on the right.  Click on it for a bigger view.

So there you have it - next time we hit an island closer to home - Skomer and its puffins.