Gannet, Bull Rock, Co. Cork

The helicopter couldn't land. Wind too strong. So instead of flying back to the mainland that afternoon, I had an unexpected few hours stranded on the Bull Rock with absolutely nowhere to be. Best thing that could have happened.

I climbed up to the gannet colony on the upper part of the rock and planted myself on the helipad that sits right in the middle of it. The one they can't use when the birds are nesting. Bundled up in my coat, wind cutting through me, perfectly happy. This gannet was hovering almost motionless in the airstream, right in front of me. The wind was doing all the work. The bird just hung there, wings set, completely still against clean blue sky. Strong sunlight from the left picking out every detail. The golden yellow of the head, those pale blue-grey bill striations, the sharp black wingtips. I had time to compose carefully, which almost never happens with birds in flight. Usually you're grabbing frames and hoping.

When I eventually made my way back down to the lighthouse keepers' quarters, the Irish Lights crew were sunbathing in t-shirts. Dead calm down there, completely sheltered, while I'd been sitting in a gale for two hours. The Bull Rock sits about three kilometres off the tip of the Beara Peninsula, and it gave me this photograph by refusing to let me leave!