The cliffs of Latrabjarg, in Iceland, are home to millions of birds. This includes puffins, northern gannets, guillemots, and razorbills. Noteworthy: some 40% of the world population for some species of birds, like the razorbill, lives on these cliffs. Its measurement is considered the largest bird cliff in Europe. The cliff is 14 kilometers long and up to 440 meters high.
However, the guillemot is the most widespread bird at Latrabjarg, and it’s the thousands of puffins that most people come here to see. Latrabjarg Cliffs are well-known for how close one can get to watching the birds. Safe from foxes, the birds are fearless and provide eye-catching pictorial opportunities from close range.
The puffins are mainly tame and are the ones frequenting the grassy, higher part of the cliffs where they build their burrows, often up to 2 meters in length. They return to the similar burrows they occupied the year before, more or less always during the third week of April, where they remain until August or September. Their major breeding period is from May to July. The cliffs are also home to the largest colony of razorbills in the world, as well as thousands of other screeching breeds of sea birds, including cormorants, fulmars, and kittiwakes.
The din here can be quite overpowering, as can the stench from the piles of guano on the cliff face. For centuries, the cliffs were a source of appetizing seabird eggs for the local people. Many farmers would like to catch birds and gather eggs, even risking their lives as they rappel down the unsafe cliff face. It’s projected that about 35,000 birds were caught here every year until the late 1950s. Even though eggs are still gathered from the Latrabjarg Cliffs today, partly to keep alive this tradition that has been handed from one generation to the next for centuries,
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