Puffin paradise

SKOMER - Puffins are so funny they should be given to the depressed instead of drugs.

Standing next to a burrow a yard away, one appeared to be flying right at me before screeching to a halt at the burrow. Shortly before the moment of landing it resembles
a cartoon Tom or Jerry, wings and legs akimbo, face apparently expressing panic, as if it has absolutely no control over what it's doing.

Sand eels given to the chick, it then emerges to waddle with a Charlie Chaplin gait, inspecting other burrow entrances and staring, unfazed, at the crowd of 20 adoring fans who can't believe they're only one yard away from it. The puffin meanwhile
seems to be in its element as it basks in the glare of mobiles, video cams and serious photogs with expensive lenses.

Even in the water they continue to amaze, diving for eels for up to a minute they're more elegant then when they fly. And they cluster in their dozens on the sea, looking just like rubber ducks on the bath. They fly like bats, wings
flapping furiously, banking steeply, which is why the gulls don't try to catch them in the air, and then avoiding the gulls with a scurry to the sanctuary of the burrow.

If I'd known they were this much fun I'd have visited Skomer in the puffin season way earlier.

Guillemots are quite comical too. Their plunges from the cliffs seem sure to end in a watery crack but they glide and swerve just in time. Coal grey and white, they're absolutely beautiful. Two-tone treats.

Theh other highlight of Wales's Galapagos island threw up its endemic treat - a Skomer vole scuttled across the path.