The shots in this gallery are all taken on our trip to Bass Rock on Sunday 17th July. A better day we could not have wished for though the wind made the crossing choppy and landing on the rock tricky. My thanks to the Marr's who run the Sula 2 for landing us there and of course picking us up a couple of hours later.

Bass Rock is a small island off the coast in the Firth of Forth just to the East of North Berwick in Scotland. There is currently believed to be 40 to 50,000 breeding pairs on Bass Rock for the summer. Each pair will rear a single chick that will eventually accumulate a large reserve of fat and at which point will waddle to the edge and fall to the sea. The fat keeps them going until they learn to fly and fish for themselves – this can be a few weeks. Adults and juveniles spend the winter out at sea in the Bay of Biscay and more recently off the coast of Africa (current thinking is they are following the Spanish fishing fleet fishing off the coast of Africa for some easy pickings!)

Every spring adults and juveniles return to the same place (in this case Bass Rock) to breed for the summer. Being a young gannet is a hazardous existence. The young are tended by both parents but as you will see from the photos are in close proximity to each other. Should a young chick stray towards another nest then the next door gannets are quite brutal in their way of discouraging the young chick from coming any further and not uncommon for them to be killed by a neighbour.

To me they are one of the most beautiful seabirds we have around our coast. Quite something to see them diving like an arrow into the sea when fishing not to mention being lucky enough to land on Bass rock and see them at close quarters! As you will see most of the shots were taken with my 18-70mm standard zoom and my 90mm macro lens. The birds are very approachable as long as you take care to do so slowly and quietly. They do have a fearsome peck so a UV filter and a good lens hood is advisable for the close approach. I have been to Bass before some 10 years ago with an Olympus OM2 SLR kit and tended to work with a telephoto lens then. This time I thought I'd try a different approach and make use of the wide end of my standard zoom and get down to the same level as the gannets. I did get a few pecked fingers but once they were happy with the idea of you being so close were really not bothered and almost seemed to me like they would pose!

I do hope you like these photos and please feel free to leave comments