This trip report was provided by Steve and Lee Peck.

A trip to Scotland with Lee to see some friends and family started with a boat trip from North Berwick to visit the returning Puffins at Bass Rock.

These guys have always been on my radar to see and photograph, and this was the ideal opportunity to do so as they were just returning from their eight months of living on the open oceans to breed and raise their single chick , called a “puffling” – bet you didn’t know that!.

The day started waiting for the boat to arrive, so I wandered about the harbour and managed some lovely shots of Northern Gannets diving for food, along with a brief sighting of a Eurasian Oystercatcher and one lonely Barn Swallow.

Onto the boat and off to the rocks and on route we picked up Northern Fulmer, and thousands of Kittiwakes. As we approached the rock we got our first sight of the Puffins which were swimming all around the boat with many more perched on the rock itself along with thousands of nesting gannets.

There were so many “English” lifers for me to try and see, the ones I did get were Guillemot, Razorbills, Shags, Eider Ducks, Great Black-backed Gulls and Sandwich Terns.

A really great trip was eventually topped off later that week when at a park in Edinburgh I got my last lifer of a Tree Creeper!