Lovely Outliers

Vestmannaeyjar is home to Iceland‘s largest puffin colony. There is a convenient bird viewing platform located on the north side of cape Stórhöfði. In our quest to see all the puffins, we headed there in the afternoon. There was nary a bird on our first visit to the area (although it was still stunningly beautiful).You can see that the sea was starting to get a little bit unruly, and sure enough, our ferry was cancelled again that night (gah!). As frustrating as it was to have our best-laid plans foiled again by the ferry/sea, we were able to head back to puffin point and try our luck again at spotting the birds as they returned from their day at sea to their cozy little nesting burrows. We spent the evening with one other tourist watching from the viewing tower as dozens of puffins, with their pleasantly portly bellies, flew in land and settled down for the night. The internet has suggested to me that there are several different things a collection of puffins can be called. My favourite is of course “an improbability of puffins” or possibly “a puffinry of puffins.” For your viewing pleasure and general joy, I have included an improbability of puffin pictures, which is almost the same thing.