Western Shores of the
Northeastern End of Ciboux Island

The two views on this page show the western shores of the northeastern end of Ciboux Island. In photo #1, one thing that stands out is the black seam that runs along the island from left to right not far above the water: could it be a coal seam? The rocks here are heavily layered, making it easy for the ice to penetrate the surface and create nooks and crannies that serve as nesting holes for the puffins. I take the white on the column at the left to be guano, not a different coloured rock.

There are birds in photo #1, though only the three herring gulls are easy to see: the one on the rock above the water in the centre, the one at the far right of the photo just above the water, and the one below the guano-stained colum at the left of the photo. Puffins are also visible here: what appears under magnification to be a pair are in the crevice in the cliff at the far left of the photo and another is hiding inside the pear-shaped crevice at the far right of the photo. There may be others, but, if so, I didn’t spot them.

In photo #2, it’s pretty hard to miss the six puffins along the cliff; the lowest bird about a quarter of the way in from the left doesn’t appear to be a puffin, since it lacks the charac­ter­istic red-orange feet—it’s possibly a razor­bill.