Skellig Michael — puffins and rocks

I spent a night in Portmagee, got on a boat at 9:00 AM, and was climbing the 600 steps of Skellig Michael by 10:30 AM. The crossing was honest — not rough but moving enough that I got a sense of why the nearly-unbearable swells of a bad day must be truly miserable.

The whole point of a Skellig trip is the place itself, which is one of the strangest landscapes in Europe. Puffins are a bonus. But they are a very good bonus. Atlantic Puffins are dug in across the upper terraces, scuttling between burrows in that earnest small-dog way.

Beyond puffins: nesting Northern Fulmars on every ledge (don’t approach, they vomit on you), a few Razorbills and Common Murre around the landing, and Shags doing their wings-out pose. Gannets are on Little Skellig a mile off — you can see them from the summit like an actual cloud.

The monastic beehive huts on the upper plateau were what I’d come for, and they were more moving in person than I expected. I took photos and put the camera away for a while.

Back at the boat pier, a Peregrine Falcon banked overhead and took a run at a Razorbill in the swell. The Razorbill dove. The Peregrine kept going.