Well, these aren’t precisely “readers’ wildlife photographs,” but rather “photographs by friends of readers.” So while these adorable puffin photos are labeled with the name of reader Mike Howe, they were taken by his friend Mike Alexander, and as far as I know haven’t appeared anywhere except on Howe’s website. Is there any bird more adorable than the puffin—the avian panda?
Some lovely photos of Skomer Island puffins (near where I live in West Wales)) taken by my friend Mike Alexander
Here are a couple of [Alexander’s] excellent Welsh landscapes, the view from Skomer Island where the puffins breed, and the wild Pembrokeshire coast with all the seabirds.
And another installment of Donn Ingle’s plant photographs, taken near his home in southern South Africa, an area where there are many endemic species. Some of the species below weren’t identified.
Abstract leaves colourscape:
Lichen map on the side of a boulder:
Protea cynaroides (the king protea) leaf abstracts:
Rough beauty:
Oh, those Puffins are perfect.
The “Abstract leaves” were from a sugarbush (Protea Repens) of some noun.
The “Rough beauty” is, if I can recall, a Cynaroides; noun unknown. It’s a very small plant and looked quite old.
Many of my photos are on macro and close-up. The “fyn” in fynbos means “fine” and it is: small and detailed. You need to get your eyes up-close to see the wonder.
The colours of the leaves is unreal when the light streams through them. What light does here is spectacular — it’s like being in a watercolour and ink painting that never stops moving.
Donn, you have an amazing eye and a bit of the poet about you as well!
And the lichen “map”–what a perfect word to describe those crustose assemblages!
Spectacular plant pics – and the puffins!
I’m bummed if “Mike Howe Howe” is a typo – I hope that’s really his name. Brilliant!
Can I just say how much I love those puffin photos, and puffins generally? I was taken with them as a kid when they were the mark of a children’s book publisher but I’d never actually seen one – and I still remember vividly the first time I saw real puffins in NatGeo. They are even more impossibly beautiful than I could have imagined.
The puffin would be my “power animal” but for my (supposedly) intentional (supposed) choice of the manta ray in a futile effort to “butch up” my self-image.
Sorry, it’s a typo, and I’ll fix it.
Did it work, MantaOutOfTime?
No more than that kind of thing ever does. ;0)
LOL I just noticed what you did there!
Puffins rule!
More beautiful African flora…love it! “Rough Beauty” looks like an artichoke. A little lemon and garlic aioli and you have the perfect flower.
Are the flowers in the first puffin picture Silene vulgaris?
Nearly, they are sea campion, used to be called Silene maritima but apparently these days known as Silene uniflora
Thanks. The plants do look smaller than Silene vulgaris. Puffins nest on an island near where I live, but we don’t have that same campion. Neither maritima nor uniflora is in my regional flora, and not as synonym either. Flora Novae Angliae.
Beautiful pictures.
Love the puffins (of course).
But, sigh, that picture of the Welsh countryside *so* does not not look my cubicle at work…
Aw, the adorable puffins!