St Kilda

We have just returned from an action packed trip through the Outer Hebrides and a weekend of wildlife photography in Knapdale and Tayvallich! We saw the sights such as the Calanais stones, Butt of Lewis, blackhouses and brochs, but our main focus was on beachcombing and wildlife spotting.

The beaches of the western isles look like they should be somewhere in the Caribbean, with vast expanses of golden sand and turquoise water. The weather definitely reminds you that you in Scotland though that's for sure, the wind never really died down at all which was great in a way as it kept the midges away. In terms of finding stuff washed up on the beach, our hauls were not as good as we expected them to be, but still pretty exciting. Oystercatchers were EVERYWHERE being fiercely protective of their territories, as were Lapwings making their weird wittery noises in the fields.

Most of my beachcombing finds were bones and skulls. I have a couple of cow vertebrae, fulmar skull, some unidentified incisors, a wading bird skull that I've still to ID and an otter skull! We were also lucky enough to go on a trip to St Kilda, an isolated island 41 miles west of Benbecula which is now a world heritage site. It is also home to a prehistoric breed of sheep know as Soay which because they are isolated on the island, have remained virtually unchanged for centuries! There have been genetic studies carried out on the population for the past 50 years and so it was very exciting to meet some of them. Shortly after we landed we also met the St Kilda Wren which is a subspecies of the wren found in the UK but slightly bigger in size. There is also an endemic St Kilda mouse but perhaps unsurprisingly we never bumped into one :)

St Kilda Wren

Soay lamb

Gannet colonies on the stac

After we had climbed a little way up the hill to look over the cliff, met with a pair of great skuas (on 'bonxies' as they are known in Scotland) and their fluffy chick, and explored the remains of the village in the bay, we had a quick tour around the stacs before we had to head home. The sea stacs around St Kilda are important breeding sites for gannets, puffins, fulmars and guillemots. The inhabitants of St Kilda used to row out to the stacs and scale the steep craggy cliffs to catch the birds for food, they were definitely a brave and hardy folk! It was amazing just how many there were covering and flying around the stacs, and I'd never seen so many puffins in my life, there are thought to be up to 136,000 pairs!

Great Skua in flight

One of the many puffins and guillemots

Gannet on the wing