A flock of snow buntings, a skein of brent geese, a flotilla of eiders, a great skua or a lone gannet makes it worth the waiting.
It was a pair, in fact, doing a little late courting, and then, just to push the point home, a great skua floated into sight.
So taken was I with this vision of perfect Iceland that I did not realise that I had walked into a skua colony, not, that is, until one fearless great skua hit me.
Basking sharks, seals and seabirds on the way, plus the chance of an aerial attack by a "bonxie" (great skua).
The great skua has a surprising genetic similarity to the physically dissimilar pomarine skua, and most ornithologists now assume the great skua is a hybrid species between the pomarine skua and one of the northern skua species.
Rounding the east side of the island the sea gets a little choppier in the tideway but we have a grandstand view of a gannet being robbed by a great skua.
Smaller than the great skua but a little larger than the Arctic, the most obvious features of the pomarine are the two central tail-feathers which are considerably longer than the rest.
During the summer, it is the pungent smell and incessant cries of seabirds - gannet, shag, Arctic skua, great skua, kittiwake, Arctic tern and puffins - nesting on the northern cliffs and hills - that dominate.
The island's cliffs hold breeding colonies of many seabirds, including gannet, fulmar, storm petrel, Manx Shearwater, razorbill, great skua, Leach's Petrel and puffin.
There will be kittiwakes and terns wheeling above your head and maybe the huge plunging shape of a bonxie - the great skua.