The early morning ferry sliced across a flat-calm sea while the already warm sun rose higher into the clear blue sky. The single layer of suncream I’d hurriedly applied earlier was clearly not going to protect my winter-white skin from the Herm sunshine - famous for causing sunburn even when it’s cloudy! My few fellow passengers disembarked and went in one direction as I trudged to the south-eastern cliffs, eyes peeled for the little birds.

I walked the cliff path one way and back again with no sign of a Puffin. Hot, sweaty and fearing defeat, I eventually called the Herm office, which helpfully had an in-house Puffin expert. Brett very kindly came out on a quad-bike to show me the most likely location to spot them.

It quickly became apparent that Herm Puffins are more cautious than those we’re used to seeing in close-up photos. Their nesting site is, I’m told, not on a clear, grassy gentle slope as I’d expected, but rather on the sides of the cliff - impossible to get near to. It is, in fact, solely for this reason that the small colony still exists, a bird expert told me.

So I bedded in on the side of a cliff having scrapped all hope of my Puffin portrait, and instead enjoyed the now-hot sunshine, waiting to see if I could even spot any of the as-yet illusive Auks. Before long I spotted a pair bobbing in the sea below and quite distant from me. I began seeing more, some in pairs, others in small groups. Spending most of their lives on the water, they may have not even begun nesting yet and seemed quite content hanging out together and occasionally diving for fish. I counted a definite 12 individuals, perhaps 14 but I may have double-counted a pair.

I had borrowed a 100-400mm lens from a very generous photographer friend, with a 1.4x teleconverter to give it some extra reach. On the cropped-sensor of my Fuji X-T2, that gave me the equivalent focal length of about 900mm. More than enough for my needs, or so I thought. To capture these tiny, distant birds, I would have actually needed a lens at least double that length and ideally even more. Such lenses simply don’t exist for the average photographer. And so I realised that my mission was a failure - I was not going to photograph what I wanted and instead would soak up some more sun and use this lens to simply watch these interesting puffins as they bobbed about cork-like over the ripples in the sea. I shot some photos but nothing worthy of publishing and a few of the occasional passing gull.

Many of the Puffins had moved closer to the next headland where I knew the slope was more accessible so I followed them there. While much closer, I could still not get close enough to justify a good picture. Better luck was probably had by a family in kayaks, who were able to approach the Puffins at a reasonable distance, but lacking the lens-power I had, likely achieved no better pictures than I.

Tired, hungry and par-baked, I packed up and wandered to the Mermain Tavern where a cold soft drink and needlessly-large portion of very tasty fish and chips awaited me before catching the early afternoon ferry back to Guernsey.

My mission was ultimately a failure, but it’s always a pleasure to visit Herm, especially when the weather is so perfect. Knowing what I now do about Herm’s Puffins, it’s unlikely that I’ll try again. I might kayak around to them one day, but it would be too risky to carry any decent camera equipment on such an unstable platform, so it would only be for the pleasure of watching these ‘clowns of the sea’.

I should make it clear that Puffin numbers are in serious decline and though attempting to get near them (you won’t be able to) may not affect them directly, it is fairly easy to disturb other nesting birds, so please be thoughtful on the cliff paths or on the water. The chances of a close encounter with anything other than gulls is so slim that I don’t believe it is worth risking stepping off the path, for your own safety and that of the wildlife.