The Shetland Island’s aren’t quite as inaccessible as St. Kilda but they’re still fairly remote and visiting them requires either a choppy ferry ride from Aberdeen or a flight from Glasgow. Although it is mostly visited for the small ferry terminal that connects the island to Claonaig on the mainland, Lochranza is also worth visiting for its tourist attractions. There are a couple of National Trust for Scotland designated paths in the nature reserve which run close to the cliff edge and others which circle a nearby loch, but please note that the NTS make a point of asking you not to explore the rest of the site as you could upset the breeding pairs. There are some puffins about wherever there are suitable nesting habitats as described – for instance at Fowlsheugh (RSPB Reserve) below Stonehaven and also the cliffs by Muchalls, above Stonehaven – just two more slightly puffinous places on this east coast stretch. So, to conclude, I’d say it should be straightforward to nail your puffins, so long as you come between, say, April – but not too early – and August. Telephone 07831 885985 or 07732912370. Puffin places on the Scottish coasts…All right. *They oldest puffin ringed by scientists – and whose ring was found – was over 30 years old. There’s a lot of other interesting stuff going on along the seaboard. (Well, they’re hardly going to get it from the health-food store, are they?). Another great location to see puffins is at Noss island which is regarded as one of the most spectacular wildlife sites in Europe. The birds often fly two hours to get to their hunting grounds. Scotland’s largest single colony is found on the island of St Kilda (136,000 pairs). You’d like to know where to see puffins in Scotland? To be honest – and this is as much to do with geology as anything else – it isn’t until you are seriously up north that you get into a few ‘stroll up to them and snap a cutesy picture’ situations. Capelin are a sprat-like North Atlantic fish. But remember, some of the places where you might see puffins are pretty much mixed in with where you’ll see the rest of their cousins. Some of the other islands are so difficult to get to they’ve escaped the disturbances of Scotland’s tourism industry, although even St. Kilda – the UK’s remotest island – now has regular tour boats offloading people for day trips. 90 minute trip to the Ascrib Island to visit the Puffin breeding colonies and the resident seals (common seals and grey seals). As with elsewhere in Sutherland, the puffins come ashore to breed in late April and usually stay till late August so if you’ve come to this part of the country to do a summer tour of the North Coast 500 you might as well take the short detour to Faraid Head to say hello to them. The island of Handa, north of Lochinver, however, is fairly easily accessible and includes puffins on its birdy menu. Sadly, one auk you won’t see is the Great Auk. No more asking where to find Puffins, they were everywhere! Look for puffins in Scotland on steep grassy cliffs, or those parts of cliffs with scree or, in general, where it’s that bit greener (indicating soil rather than bare rock). It’s just a sample really. The Treshinish Isles are a real wildlife-lovers paradise and in addition to the puffins you’ll frequently see porpoises, dolphins and basking sharks as well as the occasional minke whale. Keen on birds? I was outraged. St. Abb’s Head National Nature Reserve lies on the Berwickshire coast five miles north of Eyemouth between Dunbar and Berwick-Upon-Tweed. As an added bonus those large crescent-shaped bills also make a great tool for attracting mates, although their vibrant bright-orange colour disappears once the breeding season is over. The best place to see Puffins in Scotland. (Sure, it happens. Also, here are some more suggestions for seeing wild nature in Scotland. What took me by surprise as I sat on the edge of the tour boat wasn’t the number of gannets rather than the acrobatics of the puffins. The Shiants out in the Minch and also the Treshnish Isles are well known. There are lots more Scottish puffin locations. The last ever sighting was in 1852. Here is our pick of the best places to see puffins in the UK A few places, such as the Bullers of Buchan north of Aberdeen and Bempton in Yorkshire, have small mainland colonies, but most are on islands. The feet stick out like brake-lights. Can anybody tell us where we should go, and if they are still in Scotland in August. Puffins can be found in many parts of Scotland, which means they may be closer to where you are going than you think! Although the Duncansby Stacks are the highlight of a visit (they’re absolutely enormous) if you’ve gone there to look for puffins you might want to have a good look at the deep gorge called the Geo of Sclaites that lies between the stacks and the lighthouse. Go to St. Kilda for St. Kilda tours: See north-west Europe’s largest seabird colony including the UK’s largest colony of Atlantic puffin, northern fulmar and one of the world’s largest gannetaries. Telephone 01586 552319. You’ll either love this or just want to slap the author. While it’s almost impossible to name every cliff face on the mainland that puffins like to call home there are a few islands that are famed for their puffin colonies. (Don’t get too close to these, will you? Photographing Puffins by Hugh Harrop There they are called ‘tammy norries’ – a word, may I say, that I have only ever read in tourist guides and, for all I know, could originally have been invented by a guidebook writer and been repeated ever since. See puffins in their natural habitats on the Firth of Forth. During the breeding season the males grow a bright orange coating over their bills but it flakes off once the season ends. The average time in total a puffin spends underwater during the breeding season is about seven hours. OK, I know enough now about how to recognise a puffin. Early in the season they come in off the sea and hang about, just off their breeding colonies. Telephone 07767 872260. We are travelling to Scotland next week (7th August). There they are, all these auks, doing their best to be entertaining – and all you want to see is the guy with that strap-on stupid beak? To be honest I’d probably recommend Faraid Head for a visit even if there weren’t any puffins as the view across Balnakeil Bay is spectacular. Even so, life must have been terribly difficult as the rough seas made fishing almost impossible and their only other source of protein was the seabirds that nested on the cliffs – most notably puffins which were easily caught with long poles and nets. Posted In: Travel. The last one recorded in Scottish waters was actually presented alive in 1821 to Robert Stevenson by a local crofter. Go to St. Kilda for St. Kilda tours. You can park at the layby at the Caithness boundary sign and head towards the sea along the peat track, just past the sign (about 2km, there and back). These include guillemots, razorbills and kittiwakes, along with some puffins … This spot is quite near the car park so you don’t even need to walk that far to see them which has to make Sumburgh Head one of the most accessible puffin colonies in Britain. The Complete Guide to Visiting Loch Leven in Kinross, The Complete Guide to Visiting St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, The Complete Guide to Visiting Lochranza on the Isle of Arran. Anyway, these other auks are comfortable in big numbers, nesting side by side on these shelves and ledges, sometimes also in company with that sea-going delicate-looking gull, the kittiwake. This is a fine way of spending part of a sea-passage in Scotland. Puffins are something of a birdy speciality on the Northern Isles. But your approach to them isn’t as easy as, say, the quite famous ones at Faraid Head near Durness. Then the great auk was gone for ever. Other than the puffins, the highlights of the Treshinish Isles are Staffa and Fingals Cave which is an incredible sea cave formed entirely by hexagonal columns of lava. There are now an estimated one million seabirds living on the islands which is a wonderful achievement, but the downside for tourists is that it’s really smelly in the areas where they nest because there are so many of them. The Isle of Lunga. According to the Scottish Seabird Centre, puffins beat their wings up to four hundred times per minute which means they need to eat lots of fish for energy, so luckily for them their over-sized bills can hold up to a dozen at a time. We would like to see Puffins. Look for puffins in Scotland on steep grassy cliffs, or those parts of cliffs with scree or, in general, where it’s that bit greener (indicating soil rather than bare rock). Other than its fascinating history, Shetland boasts one of the most diverse wildlife areas in the British Isles and it’s especially popular with seabirds, no doubt due to the fact that no spot on the islands is more than three miles from the sea. Thanks in advance. Hopeless under water. The Isle of Lunga. (Pictured here) Some places to see puffins in Scotland. Tours can be booked online or at the centre and there are a few options varying in price and duration. It’s even close to an airport so you could take a flight in just to see the puffins before heading elsewhere. There is a wide variety of seabirds around the islands including guillemots, gannets, razorbills, shags, graylag geese, etc. Puffins are part of the bird genus Fratercula which belong to the auk family. There are black and white auks whirring below. Nobody ever drooled over a black guillemot, but I like ’em. No point in having great long soaring wings like a gull. The centre also has a viewing platform with high-powered binoculars if you feel watching a TV screen is a bit too hands-off, but for the ultimate puffin-viewing experience you need to get out into the water which is where the tour boats come in. That might be because there’s a massive Viking influence in the Shetland Islands and you’ll find loads of Norse influences like the magical Up Helly Aa fire festival held annually in January, Mousa Broch (one of the largest ancient forts in the world), and Jarlshof which is the site of a 9th-century Viking settlement. The quaint East Lothian coastal town of North Berwick has a lot going for it. Answer 1 of 9: I plan a visit to Scotland in late May and would very much like to get up close to a puffin colony and I understand there are many places to see them. Here are tips on where to see puffins in Scotland. On the other side of the Atlantic from Scotland, they are called murres, a name you never hear here. Here are some of our top places where you’re pretty much guaranteed to see them: Handa Island . Amongst the mixture of grassland and reed beds you’ll be able to spot otters, kingfishers, ospreys – and even the occasional white-tailed eagle. The inflatable tour will get you to the Bass Rock in double-quick time but prepare to get wet if the sea’s a bit choppy. Adult puffins eat in excess of forty fish every day. While the majority of Scotland’s puffin population are found offshore on remote islands there are several areas on the mainland where you’ll be able to see them. Currently, there are an estimated 250,000 puffins on St. Kilda. Being a puffin in Scotland is probably a deadly serious business, what with the sandeel shortages and all that burrowing playing havoc with the plumage in the breeding season. As Staffa is a small island out at sea, its wildlife population is dominated by seabirds. The village lies at the foot of dramatic mountains that encircle it to the south while a small scenic bay opens up to the Firth of Clyde and the Campbeltown peninsula to the north. If crossing north over the Scottish Border on the east side, then St Abb’s Head is just a few minutes away. West Sutherland has a small number of puffins, particularly on Handa Island. Dress in layers and make sure you have rain gear even on a clear sunny day. And, yes, they are surprisingly tame when you get close. Favourite nesting site can be found at; Bass Rock, St. Abbs Head, Duncansby Head, Faraid Head, Lunga, St. Kilda and Sumburgh Head. Horned puffins dig burrows up to three feet underground. Home to one of the largest gannet colonies in the world it soars above the pummeling waves of the Forth with cliffs that rise in excess of three hundred feet, and having seen it on frequent occasions while visiting that part of Scotland I was excited to see the birds that live there in such vast numbers they turn the black rock into a seething mass of white feathers. Have those binoculars handy, of course, and, yes again, on the water you obviously can’t see the feet so look for the beak and head. There are other departure points in Scotland but those are the two most-used, although to be honest I recommend you fly as the last thing you want to be doing on a holiday is dealing with seasickness in the North Sea. Puffins respond to increasing light levels and put on their breeding dress – they’re much more drab out at sea in the winter. Vast stretches of golden sand and an azure-blue sea are the order of the day and it’s remote enough that you’ll frequently find you’re the only person there no matter the time of year. Brough of Birsay, West Mainland (Pictured below) This is not a puffin. (Pictured here). What is it about puffins? Only joking about the last one. But hang on, there’s even more you should know about puffins…and if this doesn’t make you step back and give ‘em some space and respect, then…. *Researchers say that the ‘divorce rate’ amongst puffins is between 7-13% – so that’s nice for them. (Or, at least, I’ll point you towards some puffiny places.) The National Nature Reserve is renowned for the number of wildfowl that live there and in fact, it’s home to more breeding ducks than anywhere else in Europe. How to See Puffins in the Treshnish Isles of Scotland. Staffa Tours for the Treshinish Isles. There’s also the Bass Rock – described as one of the wildlife wonders of the world – a short distance offshore and the Scottish Seabird Centre which runs frequent boat tours to it. Sometimes they wheel around in great flocks. So, auks and puffins have a high wing-loading factor – little wings useful for swimming but you have to work them hard to get airborne. But no point in having wings that are really so small that you can only use them as flippers, otherwise you’d end up like the great auk – and we all know what happened to him. 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