Puffins

Everyone's favourite bird is the puffin but they're not the easiest of birds to see in the wild. This page tells you exactly where you can see puffins in the UK. Its not complete for sure as it only lists the places I've actually been to, plus the more famous of the other locations. There's bound to be more.

When

Puffins come ashore around about mid April time to breed. They leave at about the beginning of August. Outside these times they're out in the Atlantic ocean. So, late April, May, June and July are the only times you'll get to see them.

Orkney - Westray

This is the second best place I've been to to see puffins. There is a very large colony at Stanger Head on Westray, grid ref HY 510427. Its only 3km from the ferry terminal so there's no need to take a car on the ferry out there.

Orkney - Hoy

In 2004 we saw puffins on the summit of the Old Man of Hoy, grid ref HY177078, but not on the cliffs around the Old Man. They have burrows right on the summit, but obviously, this is probably the most inaccessible location ever, unless you can climb E1 of course. In 2006 I saw puffins on the cliffs around the Old Man, there weren't many though, only about a dozen.

St Kilda

St Kilda has the biggest puffin colony in the UK but its not really that accessible. You can get boat trips out to St Kilda but they're expensive (£160 in 2008) and can only run when the weather's good. Unfortunately most of the puffins nest on Dun and the boats land on Hirta. Its not possible to boulder hop the short gap between Hirta and Dun, however, you can easily see the puffins with binoculars. You can see some puffins on Hirta, there are a few that nest on the cliffs around Village Bay at grid ref NF 098987.

The boat trips also cruise around the sea stacks of Stac Lee, Stac an Armin and Bororay. There's every liklihood you'll see puffins on/in the water. Obviously, the big draw around here are the gannet colonies where you'll see gannets in tens of thousands

Durness

The only place I've ever seen puffins on the UK mainland is near Durness, which is the nearest town to Cape Wrath. The puffin colony is very accessible on Faraid Head and you can see the puffins at grid ref NC 398701.

Shetland

The best place I've ever been to to see puffins is the RSPB reserve at Sumburgh head. You can see puffins from the car park but there's lots more if you walk up towards the lighthouse. There's even RSPB boards about that say "see puffins from here". There is a dry stone wall all around the edge of the reserve/cliffs and you just look over the wall and there's puffins within 2-3m. There's a car park, RSPB leaflets and Sumburgh Head hotel is about 1.5 km away. Located at grid ref HU408793.

There's two other locations on Shetland that I've been to where you can see puffins.

I've only been to the Noss reserve (HU554403) by boat. There's a big gannetry there and supposedly puffins but puffin watching by boat isn't the best as they're shy of boats. We therefore only saw a few.

There are also a lot of puffins at Herma Ness up on Unst (HP596196) but again the attraction here is an enormous gannetry. We were watching a big flock of gannets about a mile out at see in a feeding frenzy then discovered why - there was a pod of orcas (killer whales) fishing. Whilst the orcas were rounding up the fish they only briefly came up to breath but when the started feeding they were breaching and jumping out of the water. The path out to Herma Ness has been improved in 2009 and there is now a board walk across the bog and through the bonxie colony. Stick to the path and the bonxies won't bother you.

Scilly

There are a few puffins in the Scilly isles. They're on Annet (SV863088). You need to get a boat trip out from St Mary's to see them and you cannot land on Annet. You should be able to see a few from the boat though.

Other places

There are puffin colonies on Skomer in Pembrokeshire, The Shiants in the Outer Hebrides, The Farne Islands off Northumberland and Handa Island of the far NW coast of Scotland. I've not been to these puffin colonies so you'll have to do the research yourself before you spend time/money.

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