CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

This morning I took a boat out to Bass Rock with a view of taking my second landing trip in two years with the Scottish Seabird Centre.  This was actually my fourth attempt to do this trip as the previous three occasions were cancelled due to the weather.  With finger crossed I headed down to Dunbar Harbour this morning and all looked to be OK as we boarded the 'Fisher Lassie'.  However our hopes were dashed when the swell was too big and we couldn't land safely on the Bass so the skipper made the call to abandon the landing in the interests of safety, which we totally supported. Anyway there was an opportunity to circle Bass Rock and grab some images of the 150,000 birds that call the big lump of rock home. Using the Fujifilm X-Pro2 and either the XF100-400mm f4.5/5.6 or Samyang 8mm f2.8 fisheye I set about capturing some images. Here are a few examples of the images I captured this morning.  I will be hoping to actually land on Bass Rock later this summer...

Today is day 3 of the 7 day Nature Photo Challenge set by Tom Hodgetts and today is a picture from one of the natural wonders of the world, which is right on our doorstep.  I am talking about the Northern Gannet colony on Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth.  We see The Bass every day (when there isn't any sea fog of course) from the end of our road and after two years I still marvel at the annual spectacle of 150,000 Northern Gannets ( Morus  bassanus)  living, eating and breeding in such a small area. In 2014 I had the pleasure of landing on Bass Rock as part of a Scottish Seabird Landing Trip and it is still one of my all time top three Wildlife experiences (whale watching in South Africa and the Sea Eagles on the Isle of Mull). I took hundreds of images during the three hours I spent on Bass Rock but this shot of a Gannet spreading its wings is one of my favourites.  The wingspan of a Gannet is impressive but it is even more so close up. This image wa...