Mike Powles’ Nature’s Visions - wildlife travel and landscape images

2009 Trips, South East Scotland

"Seabirds - The Firth of Forth"

 

Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th July 2009

Price per person per day :  £120

Space is limited to 8 each day 

 

Join us during the early summer on Scotland's south east coast for some stunning sea bird photography.  Our aim is close encounters with diving gannets and landings on Craigleith to photograph the island's breeding birds.

During our visit we journey by boat a short distance from North Berwick towards Bass Rock.

Set in the Firth of Forth, the Bass, during the summer months is home to around 140,000 gannets.  When viewed from a distance, the Bass stands out white like a limestone tooth pointing to the sky, but on close inspection, it is clear that the white is in fact thousands upon thousands of gannets.

Our trips will capitalise on the plunge style fishing of the gannet; we encourage numbers of birds by chumming (baiting of gulls and gannets) with fish offal.  Once the gannets are focussed on feeding and plunging like aerial torpedoes into the waters near our boat, we will introduce whole fish.  This we hope should yield some spectacular photography - flight shots, birds plunge diving and birds emerging from the foaming water with whole fish, having claimed their bounty from the sea.

This trip is scheduled for 3 hours - or until we run out of fish!  Journey time from the shore is about 45 minutes, giving us ample time for memorable action packed photography.  On our first day, after our excitement with the diving gannets, we are privileged to land on Bass Rock providing us with the opportunity of portrait and flight shots of these wonderful birds.

On our second day, after our excitement of our second diving gannet session, we journey onward to Craigleigh, a small island off the Lothian coast where we hope to land and photograph its breeding birds.  The island is home to puffin, cormorant, shag, guillemot and fulmar.  During the last few years, the island's habitat has been much restored with large tracts of invasive mallow being removed.

We plan to spend about 3 hours on the island before being collected by our boatman and returned to shore at North Berwick. 

More trips:  2009 Trips, South East Scotland 2009 Trips, Tigers of central India 2010 Trips, India 2010 Trips, Kenya 2010 Trips, Madagascar