Northeastern End of Ciboux Island
Seen from the Western Side

Notice how comparatively smooth the waters are on the western side! Taking photos got a lot easier (and safer)! The three views on this page focus on the northeastern end of Ciboux Island.

While, as we have seen, the flat rock shelf at the tip is not continuous, one could be forgiven for thinking it were from from the first two photos. The primary thing that strikes me look­ing at photo #1 is how much more intact the land is on the western side. While the effects of ero­sion are clearly present, the great stone “ramps” that dominate on the east­ern side are missing here. And while there is a bit of tilt to the rocks here, at this point, it’s not at the 45° angle that was so striking on the east side.

In photo #2, the sharpness of the rocks left of centre accords well with what was seen from the eastern side; they contrast, however, with the jutting rocks seen right of centre, which appear considerably more rounded and less pointy, an impression con­firmed by the photo at the bottom.

Under magnification, photo #2 reveals the two birds in the middle ground to be Atlantic puffins. There are numerous birds in the waters west of the point, but, even with mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, they are too in­dis­tinct for me to identify their species (indeed, some of them might well be the heads of seals). There are still lots of cormorants on the outer rocks, par­ti­cu­lar­ly on the heav­i­ly guano-stained white one.

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There are plenty of birds in photo #3 as well, mostly cormorants and her­ring gulls. I’m not sure what the white bird with the huge wingspan in the air is; I thought at first it might be an eagle, but under magnification it is clearly a white bird with grey wings, so it is likely either a black-legged kittiwake or a herring gull. The two gulls perched at the end of the upper jutting rock in the centre of the photo are easy to espy, one is swim­ming in the water at the far right, another to the left of the lower jutting rock, and yet another is sitting on the rocks above and to the left. Four cormorants are sitting on the rocks below the lower jut­ting rock and the black shapes of three more can be seen along the guano-stained rock at the far right, which they share with a sitting herring gull. You may also be able to just barely make out the faint white breast of a nesting puffin in the burrow beneath the overhanging rock shelf to the right of the jutting rock.