Puffins of Bonavista: Close Encounters at Cape Bonavista Lighthouse

Just fifteen minutes from Elliston sits another excellent puffin location on the Bonavista Peninsula: the cliffs surrounding Cape Bonavista Lighthouse. While Elliston often gets the spotlight as Newfoundland’s best land-based puffin site, Bonavista quietly delivers fewer people and epic close encounters.

The lighthouse itself dates to 1843 and stands on dramatic cliffs that jut into the North Atlantic. Would you believe that this is the only shot we got?

Today it’s a National Historic Site, but for bird photographers the real attraction lies just beyond the lighthouse grounds, where grassy cliffs drop steeply toward the ocean.

Most visitors naturally gather at the first viewpoint to the right of the lighthouse. From there you can see a small offshore island where Atlantic puffin nest in burrows. With binoculars or a long lens you can watch them flying in from the sea, landing clumsily on the island, and disappearing underground with beaks full of fish.

It’s a great view, but it isn’t the best one. The real magic happens if you keep walking to the eastern side of the site.

A short distance farther along the cliff path, the experience becomes almost surreal, especially at sunrise. The birds are impossibly close and it’s perfect for photography.

We visited this area several mornings right at sunrise. A few other photographers were usually there as well, but everyone seemed to understand the unspoken rules: stay low, move slowly, and keep quiet. The result was a calm, respectful atmosphere that allowed the birds to behave naturally. And the light was spectacular.

Because the cliffs face east, the early morning sun creates beautiful backlighting that turns the grass into a glowing halo and produces that dreamy photographic effect known as bokeh. Puffins landing along the cliff edge appear almost illuminated as they shuffle toward their burrows.

Another unexpected highlight at Bonavista had nothing to do with puffins at all. Every time we drove the short road between the lighthouse parking area and the nearby Little Dairy King restaurant, we spotted the same fox trotting along the roadside. It seemed completely at ease and quickly became part of our daily routine. Puffins on the cliffs, fox on the road. Not a bad way to start the day.

If Elliston gave us the stability of photographing puffins from solid ground, Bonavista added something else entirely: quiet moments, glowing morning light, and birds that sometimes felt like curious little neighbors rather than distant wildlife.

Together, the two sites made the Bonavista Peninsula one of the most rewarding bird photography destinations we’ve ever visited.

Andy and Jennifer Martin

We’re Andy and Jennifer—two former corporate executives who chose long ago to prioritise experiences over stuff while pursuing our passions for travel and photography. From the Arctic to Antarctica, and most places in between, we’ve captured the world through our lenses and love sharing those stories. Our careers gave us the means, but our purpose is inspiring others to explore and helping people create images they’re proud of.