The Shiant Puffins

The Shiants are a small group of islands lying some 4 miles off Lewis and 12 miles from the northern tip of Skye.  As one of the great bird stations in the northern hemisphere, the cliffs and surrounding skies are filled with guillemots, razorbills, fulmars, kittiwakes, shags and great skuas.  But what we really wanted to see were the puffins. 

Nearly a million of these comical birds appear from the oceans every year, taking up residence in cliff top burrows throughout the British Isles.  The puffins start congregating in the waters around their breeding sites in April and generally lay their eggs during May.  Throughout June and early July the birds are very active flying to and from their burrows with food for their chicks. 

Photo courtesy of J. Amies-Green

The puffins on the Shiants represent one in eight of the British total and 2 percent of the world’s puffins.  The islands are also the only place in the British Isles where the Black Plague rat exists in any numbers.

Moonshadow visited the islands during a trip to Barra and the Uists in June and we were not disappointed!  Despite their tragic-comic expressions, puffins are very approachable and we were able to get within a respectably close distance to admire their colourful tangerine feet, dapper plumage and rolling gait.  It was too early for the eggs to have hatched, but by July their parrot like beaks would be full of sand eels for the pufflings.  A good excuse for a return visit.