July 26, 2013
Horned Grebe near Lake Mývatn, steam cloud at Maar Viti, and Puffins at Borgarfjörður, Iceland

I had a ball photographing this horned grebe and chick on our last morning at Lake Mývatn. They were in one of the smaller ponds and the chick must have been going through the Terrible Twos. The mother would dive down and catch a fish, swim over to the chick, and the chick would turn away. The mother would get in front of the chick again and push the fish towards the chick's mouth and the chick would turn its head away. Sometimes, the mother would dip the fish back in the water and then present it to the chick again. Eventually, the chick ended up eating the fish, and in this image they were both aligned perpendicular to my lens. :)

We spent some time at the Krafla thermal area near Lake Mývatn. There were steam vents, mud pots, and the wonderful aroma of hydrogen sulfide. There's a geothermal electric plant near Maar Viti, and one of the vents was pouring out a huge steam cloud. I photographed it backlit and waited for an interesting pattern to form before firing off a high-speed burst to capture the best pattern.

We spent the last two nights at Borgarfjörður to photograph more Atlantic puffins. This area is quite different from the Látrabjarg bird cliffs and I was really happy we went there. The parking area at Borgarfjörður is at the bottom of the cliffs and there's a walkway up through the colony so it's possible to photograph the puffins on the ground at their eye level. Access to the Látrabjarg bird cliffs is restricted to the top of the cliffs, so you're largely restricted to photographing down on the birds. The evening we arrived, there was a solid cloud layer and a stiff wind coming off the ocean through which the puffins flew from their nests out to sea. It was like shooting fish in a barrel as they repeatedly flew right over our heads, sometimes just a few feet (2m) away.

The highlight of our stay at Borgarfjörður was seeing the puffins with fish in their beaks before feeding their chicks in the underground burrows. This puffin must have been directionally challenged because it landed with its beak full of fish and looked around for its nest. It paused every now and then and we had plenty of time to photograph it before it eventually flew off to try another location.