Brunnich's Guillemots en masse

[Bill Dix]

Artie's blog post of yesterday prompted me to go back and look at the files from my recent Svalbard trip, for more of this species. The Brunnich's Guillemot, or Thick-billed Murre, has a widespread circumpolar distribution with a population of some 22 million individuals. My post of last week showed an individual one in flight. This only begins to get the idea of tens of thousands of them flying around our ship at the base of a populous bird cliff. I liked the way the near birds composed themselves in a line, disappearing into the fog, even though they don't all have perfect wing positions.

D500, Sigma 150-600C @ 280mm, ISO 2000, 1/2500s @ f/7.1 manual, HH. Dark, overcast and drizzly conditions.

[Isaac Grant]

This is cool Bill. I really like the way the birds disappear into the fog. I know it was dark, but I would brighten the whole image a little.