Puffins and the Cliffs of Moher Seabird Festival, Ireland

Atlantic Puffin in Ireland. (Photo is from the internet, not ours.) Thousands nest on the Cliffs of Moher, one of few places they can be seen on a mainland.

Puffins are the stars of the Cliffs of Moher Seabird Festival which just finished this week.  We participated in several events and visited on our own, too.  Thousands--really, thousands--of puffins, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, fulmars and other birds are nesting on these cliffs which provide excellent nesting habitat on the edge of the Eurasian continent.  Looking west the Aran Islands are within view.  Next stop, Newfoundland.

Be still my heart.  I just love this stuff and the festival provided me with biologists and rangers to give me all the info I could absorb. I spent time with Jamie, a volunteer from Birdwatch Ireland looking from above.  Then we took a boat trip to the bottom of the cliffs with a bird specialist from the staff of the Cliffs of Moher.  While the formal festival is over, the birds will be there for about 2 more months and I will watch them often.

Cliffs looking south.  All the white stripes are where birds nest.  Sea stack and puffin nesting island are in the middle.

The cliffs are about 8 miles long, a remnant of silt-stone from the end of the ice ages when giant rivers laid down rock.  At the tallest point they are 700 feet high. The rock feels the full force of the North Atlantic and crumbles away leaving cliffs, spires, stacks and many ledges which are the perfect real estate for the seabirds.  Predators have a hard time getting to the nests because they are on cliff faces--good for baby birds.  The sea has fish of every size, easy to feed adults and babies. Puffins nest in little tunnels in the dirt on top of the little islands so fewer places meet their requirement to be safe from minks or other mammals who want the eggs or babies.  The razorbills, guillemots and some others lay eggs right on the rocks so they can find ledges and nest along more of the cliffs.

Usually puffins and the others spend their time out in open water so we have to be here during their nesting time to see them near land--thus the festival.  They are nesting now but the babies are not born yet--come back in a few weeks to see the young.  The adults will feed them in the nest, then the babies will fly as far as the water, basically down.  Not too hard for them.  They sit on the water and learn the key skill of diving for dinner.  After a few weeks, they have that taped and then they learn to fly. We will be here for about another month so will see parts of the cycle.

From above, the grassy area is the best puffin nesting habitat.
We watched them fly in and out and also feeding on the waters below.

Closer view of the nesting area for the guillemots, razorbills and kittiwakes..

Even closer.  Kittiwakes claim the lowest ledges.  The upright birds on the middle levels, which look like penguins are either razorbills or guillemots.  No penguins in the North Atlantic but these birds fit into a similar ecological niche.
Fulmars on top--they look like gulls but are not.

Mixed flock.  They dive from a swimming position to get fish.  They may dive 50 to 100 feet.

Us with Cliffs of Moher Ranger and bird-expert, Cormac, on a boat ride below the cliffs.

This is a famous surfing venue too.  We plan on no surfing adventures.

Text by Julianne. Photos mainly by Nancy.