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Puffin Photography on Runde

Greg

Updated: Jul 27, 2024


puffin, Runde, Norway, puffin on Runde,


It has been a long-time dream of ours to photograph puffins. We made plans a few years ago for this trip, but the global lockdown stopped us. After a string of illnesses passed it was finally time to turn the dream into reality. The first step was to find a location where puffins spent the mating season on land, and after considering Bempton cliffs nature reserve in England we decided to go to the Norwegian island of Runde where there are about a hundred thousand mating pairs every year. We packed up our car with all our glamping equipment and set out on the 2150km long 4-day journey to get to the neighboring island of Hareidlandet. There is a camping on the island of Runde just a few kilometers from the start of the hike to the puffin viewing point, but it is very crowded and is more suitable for camper vans than glamping with a large tent. The distance of 47kms we had to drive from our camp to the parking lot on Runde did not bother us since the islands are connected by a series of bridges and undersea tunnels.

Why pick Runde? It is not only the summer home of puffins, but around five- to seven hundred thousand seabirds nest on the steep cliffsides, in the fields and lakes of the island. The most common species include Great Skua, Northern Fulmar, Kittiwake, Northern Gannet, European Shag, Razorbill, Common Guillemot, Ring Ouzel and the Northern Wheatear. We also can’t get enough of the stunning and always wonderous Norwegian landscape. Our plan and main goal was of course photographing the puffins, getting pictures of anything else would be a bonus. On our way there we stayed in a mix of campsites and hotels depending on the weather and our schedule, like being on time for the ferry connection.





The view from our living quarters was sometimes breathtaking


We were supposed to get 2 weeks of beautiful summer weather, but the forecast quickly turned from bad to worse as we were getting closer to our destination. It seemed as if the incoming storms would literally blow our dreams away (50-70mph gusts were forecast) but as quickly the weather changed bad it also could fool all the meteorologists and turn into sunny and pleasant. After arriving to rain, and low hanging grey clouds covering all the surrounding mountains including the puffin viewpoint the next three days only brought moderate winds and lots of sunshine. We knew that we had no time to waste as the weather could catch up with us any time, so the day after arriving we went straight for the short but steep hike that led from the parking lot to the viewpoint.


View from the cliffs on Runde


There is a whole lot to see when taking the roundtrip hike on Runde. The path winds on top of dizzying cliffs where Kittiwakes and Northern Gannets nest down below, taking the hiker to the most northern tip of the island with an old lighthouse cottage that has been converted into a self-service cabin. There are also a couple of lakes on the southern side.





The whole roundtrip is around 10kms (6miles) but can be made longer and shorter depending on what route you take and how many of the sites you decide to visit. Since we felt an urgency due to the threat of the incoming weather, we took the shortest route that goes straight through the island to the viewing point with the puffin nests. The whole island is a nature reserve, leaving the designated paths from the 15th of March until the 31st of August is prohibited as many birds nest in the fields. We saw an overly eager photographer trying to sneak up on a nesting great skua. This was met by the skua attacking the photographer flying towards him head on, hovering in front of him while displaying his large wingspan, squawking at him violently and giving the clear signal to back off. It was funny to see how quickly he turned around and found his way back to the path.


Great Skua nesting on the island of Runde

It is better to leave the birds alone and admire them from a distance (Great Skua)


The route from the parking lot goes on a paved road first with signs clearly guiding visitors towards the footpath that is the gateway to the higher areas of Runde. The first hundred or so meters (approx. 300 feet) are paved and steep with up to 20% incline, but the shortest route to the puffins gets fairly even after that. The path later becomes a mixture of stones and wooden pathways.


Path on Runde

There are a few places to watch puffins fly by, but the main viewpoint is in a rocky area with a cliff wall hanging over it and large boulders scattered all over, that clearly fell off that cliff wall. Some of them are not stable so climbing around on them is at your own risk, but it is all manageable. Diana, despite her fear of heights and fear of falling large boulders was able to navigate the area and we saw all age ranges do the hike and go there. What the mind will do to get the heart what it desires!


Runde puffin nests and puffin viewpoint

Diana collecting herself after the climb down the boulders, this is the view from the cliff edge towards the island


A well-built and secure wooden stairway leads down over the most unsafe rock parts, after it there is a steep dirt path littered with boulders down to the viewpoint.  It is fenced all around with signs reminding visitors not to go beyond that point. (Currently on google maps the viewpoint is tagged and pinned as “Puffin nests”, there is a separate viewpoint tagged a bit further north.) The viewpoint is looking out towards the sea to the southwest, so there are cliffs with puffin holes to the north, to the south and on the rocks below towards the sea with a few of them also nesting amongst the rocks above.



Fenced in! The view towards the north is blocked by large rocks


On the first day we tried our luck towards the north, and we did not know that due to the never-ending days the puffins would fly home after 10pm. Since we were there right after the summer solstice the Sun only dunked under the horizon, it never got dark. The internet told us that the puffins would fly home at around 7 or 8pm, and we were quite upset that we barely got to see a few. We were also fooled by the large masses of people leaving around this time too. The viewpoint gets quite busy with photographers, bird watchers and hikers during the day. It got to the point that we questioned the number of puffins nesting on Runde altogether as it seemed that there were more people than birds.


Runde puffin viewpoint with crowds of people

At this point it looked as though there were more people than birds


We learned the trick on the second day: do not leave at 8pm and you will get to see all the hundred thousand Puffins. They started flying home en masse after 9pm and sat and preened in front of their burrows sometimes alone, sometimes as a pair. We even got a short display of a pair doing the beak “kisses”. One got so overwhelmed with feeling that it fell off the rock they were sitting on.


Kiss Kiss Bang! ♪♪♪


Once many of them were back on shore the often seen “sitting on a rock and being adorable” type shots are easy to get, provided you can get a good spot amongst the masses of people trying to take the same image. At this point any camera will do, some puffins are sitting so close to the fence that a mobile phone or a DSLR with a kit lens is enough to photograph them.



View towards the sea from the cliffs on Runde

This is the view to the south, this is where the honor laps were most visible, and we saw more puffins on the rocks in this direction too


The interesting images for me were the flight shots. Although they may seem clumsy on land these birds are very fast flyers, they were clocked by science at 55mph (88km/h), so photographers need to be quick to get those flight shots. As always, taking the time to analyze their behavior helps more than any camera tech: they very often do “laps of honor”. They come in towards their burrows but then turn away and fly along the cliffs out towards the sea to then come back again flying the same route. And some of them do this a few times over always flying a similar trajectory. Once I learned to spot these honor laps it was easier to position myself on the cliffs and get those flight shots with a high hit rate.





What gear do you need to take puffin images? As mentioned before, for the “sitting outside of their burrow” types of images anything will do, you just need to be assertive with moving amongst the crowd to get into a favorable position. For the ones sitting further away and the flight shots a 400mm and above focal length telephoto lens is advisable, as you cannot freely go anywhere you want due to the restrictions. The crowds are bigger on some days and smaller on others, and as the cliffs are very exposed to the changeable weather it makes sense to plan a few days on Runde for the bad weather case.



Photographers on the cliffs of Runde waiting for puffins

Photographers were sitting on the rocks like sardines in a can


The birds can also be photographed from the sea. A few small fishing boats offer rides out to the sea where the famous diving Gannet shots can be taken and of puffins diving for fish. We did plan on doing this, but the aforementioned bad weather finally caught up with us and those boats don’t leave the harbor in high winds and stormy weather. One such boat is the “Aquila”, during the 1st of May and 31st August it does 3 daily runs. A place on board can be booked at the Goksøyr Camping and the price for an adult in 2023 is 300 NOK (26 EUR/28 USD). Another boat operator we found was through contacting Runde Panorama, a company that runs luxury cabins on Runde. The boat operator also gave a luxury price of 400 EUR for 2 adults for the same 2-hour trip that would have cost 26 EUR/person with the Aquila.


Boat trip around the cliffs of Runde

The Aquila sailing, we missed that ride unfortunately

 

Gear we used:



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Despite the weather chasing us away too soon the images we were able to capture and the memories we made are some of the fondest, and we cannot wait to get back to Runde and do the whole thing again. Next time maybe also getting a few shots of all the other birds around.



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