British Seabird Islands: Bass Rock

Well it has been a short while since I last blogged. It is not a great excuse but I have been working on my dissertation project - a photo book for the Scottish project and university dissertation - and am just a little sick of writing.

Anyway, I thought I would do a three articles comparing of the seabird islands I have visited this year: Skomer, Inner Farne, and Bass Rock. There are of course other seabird islands in the British Isles, but I have not had the pleasure of visiting them.

Firstly, Bass Rock. Bass Rock is a 300 million year old volcanic plug in the middle of the Firth of Forth. As every geography student knows, volcanic plugs are produced when the lava tubes of extinct volcanoes solidify and the surrounding rock is eroded away. The textbook example of this is Castle Rock in Edinburgh, and Bass Rock was produced by a related volcanic eruption.

From afar, the surface of Bass Rock appears white. This is a combination of a coating of guano and a smothering of Gannets. Over 150,000 Gannets crowd onto Bass Rock, making it the largest rock Gannetry in the world. Gannets and Bass Rock are so inextricably linked that Linnaeus, the grand old father of Taxonomy, gave Gannets the latin name Morus bassanus in reference to the rock.

A trip to Bass Rock starts in the town of Dunbar: the only town in the UK where Kittiwakes outnumber humans. This may not be true as I have no idea how many inhabitants live in Dunbar, what its Kittiwake population is, or the Kittiwake to human ratio of any other British towns. Still, it is a good guess. Regardless you can get within feet of Kittiwakes and their chicks without causing any disturbance.

The boat ride takes around 45 minutes to an hour and can get very choppy. Take waterproofs and, no matter how calm the sea looks, put them on: a lesson I learned the hard way. On either the boat trip to the island or the boat trip back, the captain will throw bucketfuls of dead fish over the side: a process known as chumming. This attracts hungry seabirds from miles around.

Fortunately for the Gannets - but unfortunately for photographers - Bass Rock's Gannets have been getting plenty of food this year so are less inclined to follow the boat in search of scraps than normal. On my trip chumming was largely dominated by Herring Gulls, but a few Gannets did show their faces and give us a diving show.

On the island itself, access is very limited. There are after all Gannets everywhere. A roughly 150m long Gannet free path winds its way up part of the island and leaving it is strictly forbidden. This should not worry you though. There are gannets within inches of the path for the majority of the path's length. The main problem is not finding or getting close to Gannets but trying to get compose a simple shot without countless other gannets in the background.

Having said that, there are plenty of different types of shot on offer. If you are low and slow, Gannets treat you as a Gannet with a territory and will respect you so long as you respect their space. In this way, you can get within two feet of a Gannet and get some wide-angle environmental shots.

One piece of behaviour to look out for is the paid bonding display. Whenever one Gannet from a pair returns to the nest, the two will great each other by knocking their beaks together. They repeat this as a reassurance to each other whenever there is a bit of argy-bargy within the colony. This can be set of by anything or nothing as Gannets shuffle their weight and feathers fly past in the wind.

Lastly, there are of course the flight shots. Gannets land pretty much randomly throughout the colony. However, they do tend to fly in against the wind. Once you know where the Gannets are coming from the odds are stacked in your favour.

By far the easiest way to photograph the Gannets in flight is to find somewhere where they are hanging in the wind. If the wind is right, Gannets angle themselves into the wind and become virtually stationary targets. The best place to find Gannets doing this on Bass Rock is down by the landing jetty.

In summary, Bass Rock is an amazing place and definitely worth a visit. I would be perfectly happy to spend a few hours on the island with our without my camera just watching the Gannets go about their daily lives. Photography on Bass Rock is certainly not easy and finding the right compositions can be a bit of a nightmare, but there are plenty of opportunities to keep any wildlife photography happy.