One hundred photos of Gannets

And a puffin.

Two years ago I took my son to Skomer. This seemed a good idea, as my son likes bird watching and I dislike sitting still. I wanted to support his hobbies, but after spending a good chunk of time staring at a concrete bridge waiting for a kingfisher,  decided it was best to go where there were a lot of birds. Somewhere you can trip over puffins.

Skomer Island puffin, featuring sand eels

That was the day I first saw gannets, flying overhead, became immediately obsessed. Sadly there are no gannets on Skomer. They are further out on Grassholm island, so last year I booked a boat ride, but high winds meant my plans were scuppered. We went on a cruise around Ramsey island instead, and watched the shearwaters come in from the deep sea, gathering ready to return to their nests under the cover of darkness, skimming the water silently with slender wingtips, masters of winds and tides. It was a magical experience.

But only one gannet. Again, flying overhead. Closer than last time, but not enough. Later I watched the gannets diving off Strumble head later that week, so far out to sea, out of reach.

I wasn’t taking any chances this year. This year I went in a different direction.This year I made sure I could walk to those gannets, and went to the only place in England where they nest on the mainland. This year I went to Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire. I booked a boat ride too, of course, I love a boat ride. It was cancelled due to high winds. If any of you are needing high winds and storms, for a small fee I can book a boat trip at your location. Bad weather is guaranteed.

What I thought the view of gannets would be

It didn’t matter, because, as I said, as long as I had legs, I could get to those gannets, and the first day of the holiday was perfect. We walked along the cliff edge in breezy sunshine in the opposite direction to everyone else, stood on the platform, and saw gannets. Mission accomplished. They looked as if expected, small dots which photographed badly but were visible through binoculars, and I wildly happy.

Eventually I started walking along again, because who knows what’s around the corner?

Well, you could make a good guess. It was gannets.

What the view of gannets actually was like. No, it’s not a phone camera but my zoom lens is not great.

I found myself making a strange gurgling whimper. They were not little dots. They were giant, magnificent birds and I could see every glorious detail with my bare naked eyes because they were so close. At this time of year, the nest building and courtship had just begun, and the gannets come right up to the cliff top to rip out nesting materials. They bicker and dance, take off and swoop around. And they were right in front of me.

I was having some kind of transcendent experience that cannot be expressed in words as I had used up all my joy on those cliffs of birds I could barely see. Basically, the further from the platforms I got, the less humans there were and the better the birds were. Huge swirling tornados of bold white, bluff yellow and black, a cacophony of seabird screams, a joyous fish stenched whirl of raw nature. I was in love.

Incoming

There were a few puffins there. Everyone loves a  puffins, apparently. The amount of puffin memorabilia for sale greatly exceeded the amount of actual puffins. People would kindly point them out, and we would oblige by feigning excitement, but my son said that it is hard to feel excited about a single puffin on a far away cliff when you’ve been to Skomer. There were a lot of kittiwake, which my son loves best despite them being to my eyes, a sort of polite seagull. There were guillemots, and a few fulmars and I saw a razorbill egg which brings tears to the eyes, being almost as big as the poor mother. Even though I went for the courtship dances, I managed to see one gannet chick. It was an excellent day despite the strong winds that heralded the coming storm by the time we returned to our cabin.

Look at their stripy feet.

I am very similar to my son, personality wise. We mostly like the same things. Sometimes I  wonder if my husband simply decides his life would just be easier if he were to like these things too; that there will be a lot of coffee shops and sea swimming in his life so he might as well take up drinking coffee and swimming and buy a pair of binoculars and find enjoyment in using them. Or maybe the enjoyment is watching someone you love be so very happy?

After six hours, my very patient husband finally called time, but don’t worry, we let him go to the railway museum in York the next day, so we could watch him stare up in awe at some big steam engine thing. Besides, my son and I went to see Monet’s The Water-lily Pond at the art gallery, so it was a good day out for everyone.

Remind me a bit of stormtroopers, gannets. Got a touch of the starwars about em.

Workings

When out sketching, it’s tempting to take as much as you can possibly carry, just in case. Gradually I came round to the realisation that whatever I drew when out of the studio I was going to find, if not terrible, at least very imperfect, regardless of bringing the correct pencils. So the intervening years have just been a sloughing off of unnecessary crayons, of the concept that more must be better. On a recent walk along the riverbank I couldn’t get inspired to sketch anything at all. Perhaps, I thought, I am not an al fresco sketcher, and that’s ok. I draw pretty good ravens in the studio. It’s a nice day. I can just have a nice walk.

I took the most minimal of sketch kits to Bempton despite not being a sketcher, just in case. Just the tiny palette  of gouache, a A5 Sea whites sketchbook, one aqua brush and one pencil. It weighs 200g. I didn’t use it and I didn’t take it out of my bag. It was still there when we stopped off for a walk in the Peak District on the way home.

The boys were busy climbing the mother cap. I was sitting thinking how I always take pictures of tors intending to draw one and I never get round to it when it dawned on me. I was at a loose end. I wanted to draw the thing. I had the time. I had the materials.

The mother cap

And it’s liberating, drawing with the bare minimum, especially as a perfectionist. You know right from the outset this thing isn’t going to be amazing masterpiece; a sketch is never meant to be. In its brevity and incompleteness it catches something that the camera cannot; and with that, my outdoor creativity was unblocked. It’s so easy and cheap to stuff a few pans of watercolour into a tin that I, like a newly converted evangelical, urge you to try. Keep one in the glove compartment for traffic jams, in your bag. How tiny can we make these kits, do you think?

Findings

I have completed phase two of operation raven I’ll have to show you the second raven next week, turns out I only have videos.

I started work on phase three:

Operation snake.

It’s getting exciting now,

I might get this thing completed within my lifetime.

Also, don’t ask when I might print gannets because I’ve got the next three prints planned out so not for a while.

I’m  listening to Ed Yong’s An Immense World  on audiobook while I’m carving lino, which I highly recommend. I found myself contemplating a simple housefly crawling about yesterday. Learning about how it flies in the last book was interesting. Now I learn about how it sees, and tastes through its feet. They are still annoying buzzing about,  but kind of marvellous too. I’ve often thought when we imagine ourselves as animal we are still ourselves, but able to fly or swim underwater, a sort of sword in the stone Disneyfied version of a bird, or a fish. Still somehow imposing our (mostly visual) way of relating to the world when an animal that uses the completely differently or has entirely different senses. Now I’m really beginning to grasp how mind blowing would it be to experience the world of an animal as they do. Impossible to imagine, really. Best to enjoy some gannet sounds, perhaps wafting some raw fish around to get the full experience cos they are quite smelly.