In our travels we often have expectations, whether they are based on marketing brochures or our fanciful dreams of the locales we visit. In 2013, during our trip to Scotland, there was one side trip that we signed up for with such hopes: the isle of Staffa.
Here’s an image from that outing…
Every brochure about Staffa talked about the puffins’ breeding colony, enticing us with many pictures of the cute birds. I rented a special lens for the occasion, which was the envy of some of our fellow travelers on the boat trip to the island. Of course, when we arrived there was not a single puffin in sight… It did give me the opportunity to get the best shot I ever have taken of a seagull! Oh, and my wife is convinced to this day that puffins are a Disney animatronics ploy.
I did get to meet with puffins a number of years after this, and, yes, they do exist and are incredibly cute!