A-Puffin-Huntin'

As this coy little puffer might indicate, Christopher and I are demurely proud of yesterday's successful bird watching adventure. Though arduous, freezing, and vertigo-inducing, we can only look at you askance and suggest that, while we know we are mighty heroes of outdoor exploration, we wouldn't want to put you off by being brazen. We are, after all, a lady and a gentleman, and we know the importance of proper comportment.

False. We, like the puffin above, are only feigning being classy and subtle. We, like a more honest puffin will soon show you, are obnoxiously proud of our hard work yesterday, and I am about to brag about it open-mouthed and shamelessly into your unwilling ear. Because that's who we are. Overly excitable clowns. You know that.

---

SO LISTEN UP!

It took quite the hike to get up to the puffin colonies. The trail is about as wide as a shoe, and basically goes...up. Straight up the side of the ever-so-steep volcanic cliff, with just more cliff and a grumpy blue ocean on the other side. Mind-numbingly high, severely steep, and generally terror-inducing. So fun.

We followed a precarious sheep trail, shaggy sheep included, to a black, rocky cove, but no puffins yet. Back up we went, knees wobbling, following more narrow, dizzying trails across the lip of the dead volcano until we finally spotted some tiny goobers (i.e. puffins) hopping and a-puffin-ing in the grass beneath us.

Nervously scaling more 'trails' (American park systems would never allow people on those slick, gravelly things, unless there were handrails and a thousand signs depicting a stick figure falling to its genderless death...and even then...but we're no fun), we found a rather more active puffin grouping and Chris disappeared for a very long time, doing very dangerous things for photos (mercifully out of my sight), while I shivered in the sea wind, read Midnight's Children, and spied on the goofy birds popping about.

Puffins are not skilled flyers. You would think the wind would carry their tiny bodies, but they can't even take off if there isn't a cliff to jump from. I know; I watched a little guy stuck behind a boulder, flapping its moth wings frantically, hopping higher and higher, flapping and flapping, never taking off, until it finally found an open ledge to leap/slip off. It took a long time. A comically long time. They are nothing, if not entertaining, and they seem delightfully unaware of this fact. They stand so proud; so proud and so mindless.

Christopher was taking photos of a trio on the rock ledge, creeping closer and closer while they cocked their silly heads and puttered around. Chris was focused on getting right below the three above him; what he didn't notice was a fourth puffin. Also clearly focused, the puffin was very much occupied with sneaking up on Christopher while Christopher tried to sneak up on more puffins. It was like a silent film. Chris would slither a few feet more around the rock, while the subject he was seeking out waddled a few more steps closer to him behind his back. Neither saw the other's face, but both were determined to get closer while remaining unseen. Like farcical spies, puffin and man silently circled while I cursed the iPhone charging back at the tent, leaving me video-less. The only thing missing was a ragtime piano ditty, and something falling onto someone's head. Bird poop would have been ideal.

I will be happy forever for having seen that little display.