GeologyNatural HistoryHistorical ArchiveSea Room by Adam NicolsonWestminster Shiant Isles Expedition 1958 & 2002 width=Sign the Guest Book
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These islands are one of the great bird places of the world, with so many birds that counting them is nearly impossible. According to the best estimates of modern ornithologists, struggling with densely packed, mobile, teeming and pullulating masses of identical bodies, all of which come and go at variable rates and in undependable patterns, there are between fifteen and eighteen thousand guillemots here, eight to eleven thousand razorbills, between four and six thousand fulmars, two thousand kittiwakes, roughly fifteen hundred shags, a few hundred gulls of various kinds (whose numbers are rising), twenty-six great skuas, also on the increase, and two hundred and forty thousand puffins, about one in eight of the British total and two per cent of all the puffins in the world.

Ratlets born in the house, Eilean an Tighe in June 2007

The Puffin Population of the Shiant Isles - M de L Brooke (1972)

Birds of the Shiant Isles, Outer Hebrides - M de L Brooke (1973)

Seabird Colony Register for the Shiant Isles

Hand-drawn Bird Distribution Maps for the Shiant Isles 1986:

Guillemot
Fulmar
Kittiwake

Lesser Black-Backed Gull, Herring Gull, Common Gull, Bonxie
 

Greater Black-Backed Gull
Shag

PDF Files

PDF icon Rattus rattus on the Shiant Islands
A study of distribution and abundance
David Maclennan, Johanne Ferguson and Nigel Buxton
Scottish Natural Heritage July 1996
Reproduced by permission of Scottish National Heritage
(51 Kb PDF file)

PDF icon Report on the diet of the black rat (Rattus rattus)
inhabiting the Shiant Isles by analysis of faecal material
by Martin Goulding (1996)
Reproduced by permission of Scottish National Heritage
(24 Kb PDF file)

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Links to other sites

Status of Ship Rats Rattus rattus on the Shiant Isles
McDonald, RA, Hutchings, MR, & Keeling, JGM (1997)
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