Atlantic Puffin
A bird in the hand may be worth two in the bush, but it’s far more likely to poop on you.
The small white boat Skulaskeig, its main deck open to the elements and outfitted with seats for tourists, is 60 years old and it bobs. It rolls keel out on this side, keel out on that in the two-meter swells. But it gets you there. We motored out to two small islands offshore of Reykjavik, a rookery for puffins, fulmars, gulls, and more. On the first we approached, puffins here and there were standing beside their nesting burrows and a pair of fulmars snuggled in the grass.
“Nobody here,” the captain complained, and we took off to another island (note mention of rolling above). Even before he cut the engine, we were awash in puffins. You’ve seen pictures of puffins if not the actual bird. They’re about the size of a loaf of bread, plump and stubby with short tails, and sport crisp black-and-white plumage and huge multicolour beaks. The wings are small, perfect for flying underwater. Flying in air, not so much; the birds flap frantically just to stay airborne. They were all around us, a hundred of them at least. I had Atlantic Puffin on my life list already from an excursion out to Puffin Island in Maine, but this was a wild and glorious surfeit of the comical little birds.
Puffins dig tunnels to live in when they come ashore during the spring breeding season. The adults go out to sea daily and come back with their ridiculous beaks stuffed with silvery little fish to feed their nestlings.
Black-backed gulls and black-headed gulls (which are actually dark-chocolate-headed) circled the island, and quite a few brilliant white Northern Fulmars hung out here and there, apparently just loafing.
Eider Duck
And the eiders! Dozens of eider ducks bobbed in the water and rested on the rocks and breakwaters. If you sleep on a genuine eider-down pillow, you’re snoozing on the soft inner feathers of these birds.
What I find fascinating is the profligate variety. Geese, puffins, gulls, and fulmars, all quite different, live here in pretty much one environment, a nearshore island, trying to stay out of each other’s way while eagerly reproducing their kind and eating fish. It wasn’t always like this. The environment is new geologically speaking, and the birds all have similar relatives living elsewhere. But their ancestors came, established a home, and carved a living out of a pretty hostile patch of rock. Now their descendants are doing well.
Just like the Icelanders.