Seabirds

Fair Isle’s wildlife is important and renowned to the point where the majority of visitors are from the birdwatching community.

Seabirds are a major part of Fair Isle’s identity, as it is home to one of the largest and most significant seabird colonies in Europe. The island supports internationally important numbers of common guillemot, and nationally important numbers of 10 other species, including puffins, razorbills and kittiwakes.

Two guillemots stand next to each other on a grassy ledge, both looking to their left. They have black heads and backs with white chests and tummies.

A circus of puffins stand near a cliff on Fair Isle

A razorbill lies on the edge of a rock, with the blue sea seen in the background. It has a white tummy with black feathers elsewhere. Its black beak has a white stripe along it.

Two kittiwakes sit on a ledge, with the wings flapping and their beaks open.

Fair Isle is one of only four intensively monitored sites under the UK’s Seabird Monitoring Programme (SMP) and so acts as a sentinel colony indicating the health of seabird colonies in the UK’s most northerly waters.

Fair Isle’s isolation has led to a unique sub-species of wren, Troglodytes troglodytes fridariensis, and the island is an important bird migration landfall: 390 bird species have been recorded here, more than on any other piece of land of the same size in the British Isles.

A white lighthouse stands at the edge of green cliffs on a headland. The sky overhead is heavy and grey, with occasional shafts of sunlight shining through.