By Judith Roberts
Even though we could see Bass Rock easily in the distance, it took about 20 minutes to get there in our rigid inflatable boat tour.
Bass Rock is a tall, rocky island in the middle of the Firth of Forth, which is accessible by boat from North Berwick, which is where we loaded onto our small boat tour. As we got closer, Bass Rock is a massive 351-foot-tall island; as reference, our own Mt. Driskill is 535 feet high, so Bass Rock is more than half the height of the largest mountain in our state. And as we got closer, we noticed it was covered solid white – over 150,000 gannets, to be exact.
Bass Rock is home to the largest colony of northern gannets and make this island their home during breeding season. We simply stared up in amazement at the hundreds of gannets flying overhead and the thousands upon thousands perched upon Bass Rock itself. Right then, the boat driver could have taken me home, and I would have believed myself incredibly lucky to witness such beauty; but believe it or not, Bass Rock is not the star of the show.
About another 15 minutes away is another island, longer by far and the one called Isle of May. It’s known as the Jewel of the Fourth because it’s home to the largest Puffin colony on the East coast of Scotland.
Yes, that’s right. It’s the real life Puffin Rock.
I don’t remember how I stumbled onto the Isle of May, but in researching our trip, I realized there was a chance that we could see puffins in their natural habitat. Puffins usually leave the Isle of May the end of July or the first of August, so our chances were not super great. In fact, our tour guide said she hoped we saw some puffins, because they had possibly made their way to the sea, where they would spend the next five to six years (at sea, mind you, not on land) before returning to the Isle of May.
Kyle spotted the first puffin, flying, while we were still on the boat. I couldn’t see its iconic beak, but I was surprised how quickly it flew. After our “welcoming committee” of seals lounging on rocks, we disembarked and began our tour.
We saw tons to kittywakes, which are a type of gulls, and fulmars, including the most adorable fulmar chick, but then we saw them: the puffins.
We didn’t see one, and we didn’t see a couple. We saw thousands.
On one of the cliff sides, the adult puffins were teaching the juveniles to fly, and they would participate in what I heard one researcher describe as a “puffin waterfall” (not sure if that’s a scientific term, but I did like it), where hundreds of puffins would dive off of the cliff and flap their little wings as fast as they could. I tried to film it; forget Harry Potter, this was real magic. But my videos don’t do it justice by any means, so I finally abandoned my quest to simply watch these adorable creatures.
This was one of the largest years for puffins on the Isle of May – our tour guide said they estimated more than 52,000 puffin breeding pairs were on the island this year. The puffins must be careful their eggs are not eaten by gulls, so often they build their nests in underground burrows, which is just as adorable as it sounds.
We had three hours on the Isle of May, and it was perfect. The Scottish weather, notoriously “atmospheric” and “romantic” as one of our tour guides called it (so we had better words to use than “dreary” and “rainy,” he explained cheekily), was sunshine and windy, which made exploring an island the best afternoon activity.
And I got to see my puffins. Scratch that one off the bucket list.
