Shetland

[Tringa]

Myself, Mrs Tringa and a couple of friends have been lucky enough to have had a great few days on Shetland. If there is anywhere that could draw my heart away from NW Scotland, it could be Shetland. It is a spectacular place with wildlife and geology in abundance.

Here a a few birdie shots. First two with the K5 kit lens, the third with an old 70-210mm Sigma zoom.

All comments welcomed.

Dave

A few of the 20,000 gannets around the cliffs at Noss


Great skua. They have a fairly bad reputation but I have always found great skuas to be quite friendly birds. I think they have discovered that humans are a good source of food.


Puffin.

[Bobobird]

Must be a really lovely place and one cannot usually do much wrong photographically.

Nice shots btw. I love the dramatic feel of #1.

[kdoc856]

Dave,

Image 1 is especially excellent, with it's foreground focus and prominence against a dramatic but congruent background, and the dominant element intersecting the long diagonal and leading us right to it.

"I think they have discovered that humans are a good source of food." As opposed to a good food, I hope

[Geoff F]

When I was fishing for a living, Dave, we would sometimes get Great Skua's coming close to the boat. They don't actually take food directly but attack other birds and force them to regurgitate what they have eaten.

They even do this when alternative fresh food is available.

They usually tried to pick on a lone gull which was heading home with a full crop and would try to tip the bird upside down.

The gulls often came closer to the boat for protection; but sometimes the older birds would gang up on a Skua and drive it away.

Being in the south, it was mostly migrating birds that we found in the Spring and Autumn but we sometimes saw the odd bird during the summer so I'm not sure if they were juveniles or whether a few have started breeding in the south now.

[Donald]

Good stuff Dave. Brilliant shot of the puffin. I was lucky enough to go on one of the boat trip around Noss a couple of years ago. It is indeed an awesome sight to be looking up and these thousands of birds in the air and on the cliffs. On the day we went, it was quite misty and you couldn't see the top of the cliffs.

[Tringa]

Thank you for the comments.

I'm sure the skuas would find humans to be good food, if they got the chance

It was interesting seeing the great skuas gliding along the cliffs through the guillemot and puffins colonies. It was very much like footage of lions wandering through herds of zebra - everything is perfectly calm and suddenly all hell breaks loose as a skua selects its victim.

I should not take wildlife photos, it just makes me want a bigger lens.

Dave

[Trina]

I should not take wildlife photos, it just makes me want a bigger lens.

Dave

OHHH!! I can so relate to that statement! You have some very lovely shots.. I particularly like #1... just beautiful.