Happy Anniversary!!

The Saltees are a pair of small islands lying 5km off the southern coast of County Wexford.  The islands are privately owned and largely unoccupied and are now a protected habitat home to more than 220 bird species.

Visitors are allowed on the larger of the two islands for a few hours each day. We took a quick 20 minute ferry from Kilmore Quay to Great Saltee Island. The trip required a transfer from the water taxi into a dinghy then a wet landing on the beach.

In addition to the guillemots, razorbills and gannets who make the island their home, we are here to see and photograph puffins.

Atlantic Puffins spend most of their lives out in open ocean, only returning to shore to breed during the late spring and summer.  They mate for life and often return to the same nests year after year.  The females lay one egg per year and both parents take turns keeping the egg warm. 

Puffins prefer to eat sand eels, but they are known to eat other small oily fish as well.  They have the unique ability to carry multiple fish horizontally in their beaks due to a ridged or spined tongue and upper palate.

Today, there are eggs but no chicks yet so the puffin parents are feeding offshore. You only get “that” shot of the eels in their beak when they are feeding their chicks. However they are so very cute so we took way too many photos. This is only a small sample:

Caoimhe (pronounced Kweeva) was the Warden on the island today, giving information about the birds and trying to keep the tourists in line. Small world moment, she spent 3 years living in Whistler and her partner is from North Vancouver.

 

We are anticipating a very long and busy day tomorrow, so we spent the later afternoon relaxing and reading.  We did manage to cook ourselves a nice anniversary dinner and toasted 31 years together!