An Away Day

What a magical day it was! We went on a boat trip from Tobermory out to the Treshnish Islands and the weather and sea conditions were almost perfect. The excitement started just half an hour into the journey when we encountered a pod of Bottle Nosed Dolphins. Sadly, my camera doesn't do them justice but I will always remember their ducking and diving around the boat as they played with us.
We landed first on the island of Staffa, famous for its rock formations of hexagonal basalt columns. From the sea, the scene in the third extra always makes me think of a well-risen soufflé. The Thrift on the cliffs was growing beautifully in rounded hummocks (second extra).
From Staffa we sailed to the nearby island of Lunga where we had two hours ashore. This was like another world, a world filled with a cacophony of bird calls and the amusing antics of puffins (extras one and five). There were thousands of birds which come here every spring to breed: the aforementioned puffins along with fulmars, razorbills, guillemots and shags. It is seabird heaven.
The birds don't seem at all fazed by the humans walking close to their summer homes and pose beautifully as the cameras go click, click, click. I even found a couple of shags nesting under a boulder right beside the path (extra four).
For some reason, my extras won't post in the order I wanted them to but, despite this, I hope that any Blippers who stop to look will get a small sense of the magic of my day.