Writing Feedback / My Puffin Rescue ( recent trip to Iceland) [3]

Personal essay to help the college become acquainted with me as a person - Topic of my choice

The sulky eyes, the clownish face, and the unstable small wings, these attributes are only found on the puffin. During a recent trip to Iceland I set myself a challenge of finding these beautiful birds. I should explain that I have an insatiable appetite for the wonder of wildlife and the beauty of the natural world around us.

In Iceland puffins are a relatively common sight but I discovered that nothing can compare to helping this gorgeous bird take off into the ocean. After arriving at Heimany Island, south of Iceland, I was very disappointed to be told that the opportunity to see a puffin had dropped drastically over recent years due to the decrease in their main diet of sand eels. I was hoping to take part in a fascinating old tradition on this island when the locals roam the streets during the night hours in search of pufflings. The baby puffin's l eave their nests at night, driven out by hunger, to fly to the ocean but are often distracted by the town's lights and make an undignified landing on the streets. Ideally these young birds need to land on the ocean so they can dive for food. The people of the town will collect the little ones and keep them in boxes until daybreak. The birds are then literally launched, like an American football, by their rescuers into the ocean where they will ferociously flap their wings over the surface until they decide to land.

After staying at the island for the night I had to leave in the morning by ferry. With only two hours left before my departure I decided to hike a mountain surrounding the outskirts of the town in a desperate search for some puffins. I had to find one as this was my main goal of coming to this island. After an hour of struggling up the mountain using ropes and ladders, I was able to descend the mountain in half the time by running down the scree slope, part of a mountain angled at forty five degrees that is made out of lots of small rocks. Once I had descended the mountain there was an elderly Icelandic man who was pointing into the bushes at the bottom of a cliff-side. Immediately I ran to this man looking in the bush, I realized he had found a disorientated puffin. At last, this was my chance, so after a few minutes of chasing the puffin against the mountainside, it took refuge in my hands, and with only a few cuts and scratches from this scared bird, I made my way to the beach. Once there the puffin pulled out it's wings ready to fly, so with a quick toss it started on its journey to the sea, rather than flying off heroically, he was pulled down onto the ocean's surface by gravity. Within seconds of hitting the sea, the puffin plummeted underwater and came up with a fish lying in its beak. What a truly magnificent sight!