The Jewel of the Forth
Making the most
of your visit
What’s on
April Seabirds are coming back to the island after wintering at sea.
May Seabirds are pairing up, building nests and laying eggs.
June Activity is frenetic as the first chicks hatch and demand to be fed.
July Fledglings start to fend for themselves.
August Peace returns as the birds head out to sea.
September Migrant birds stop over to rest. Check the sightings board at the Visitor Centre for the latest news.
Finding out more
Explore the island while keeping to the paths. There are information boards throughout the island and at South Horn and the Visitor Centre. Activity sheets and brass rubbing posts – there’s something for all the family.
Chat to the staff, the island’s experts.
Ready for
adventure
Welcome to the Isle of May National Nature Reserve, managed by Scottish Natural Heritage. Take in the views. Fire lit up these skies 300 million years ago from the volcanoes whose remnants surround you – the Bass Rock, white with gannet guano, conical Berwick Law, Edinburgh’s Arthur’s Seat, the ice-weathered Lomond Hills and the Isle of May itself. Dip into the guidebook and plan your visit on the map. Respect the residents by reading the ‘Need to know’ section on the back. Look out for diving gannets on a fishing trip from the Bass Rock. Wave to the shags drying their wings on the rocks outside the harbour. Close your eyes and breathe deeply. You are about to escape into a different world.
Enjoy Scotland’s outdoors responsibly
Everyone has the right to be on most land and inland water providing they act responsibly. Your access rights and responsibilities are explained fully in the Scottish Outdoor Access Code.
Whether you’re in the outdoors or managing the outdoors, the key things are to:
• take responsibility for your own actions • respect the interests of other people • care for the environment.
Visit outdooraccess-scotland.com or contact your local Scottish Natural Heritage office.
Seabird cliffs
Seabird city
Like a city, a seabird colony seems full of strangers. The best way to experience it is to get to know the neighbours.
Choose a viewpoint marked with this symbol on your map. Settle down in a comfortable place away from the cliff edge and next to the path. Stay quiet and still and the birds will soon forget you’re there.
Choose an active group and follow it. Are they courting, sitting on eggs, feeding chicks or on the watch for marauding gulls? Switch to a different part of the cliff. What’s happening there? Check for action out at sea. You might even spot the hump of a whale.
These tips also apply to watching the puffins, our visitors’ favourite bird.
Stars of the cliff
show include:
Courting kittiwakes preening and rubbing beaks.
A couple of razorbills on a ledge, only just big enough for two. A shag chick with its beak half way down its mother’s throat to swallow a snack.
You’ll smell the guillemots before you see them. No other bird brings up its chick only a beak’s length away from the neighbours.
Listen carefully to pick out different voices from the noise – the ‘kitti-waak, kitti-waak’ which gives the kittiwake its name, the braying of the guillemots and the honking of the shags.
Razorbills
Puffin
Guillemots Kittiwakes
Up, down and all around
Quarter of a million nesting seabirds on such a small island means that birds are literally everywhere – on the sea, coming in to land, among the grassy tussocks or beside carpets of white campion.More highlights to look out for:
A crèche of eider duck chicks on the loch being shepherded by their mothers. Sometimes a ‘maiden aunt’ or daughter, without chicks of her own, helps out. A fulmar sitting on the nest close to the top of a cliff while her mate glides and wheels overhead. She might have come here for over thirty years.
A dapper puffin waddling along with a beak full of small fish for its chicks or squabbling with a neighbour amid a crowd of curious onlookers.
A courting couple of herring gulls calling and displaying. They mate for life. The spectacular courting flights of Arctic terns.
Bringing up baby on the May is more than just for seabirds. Look out for small birds like rock pipit and pied wagtail. The agitated call and flight of an oystercatcher mean that there is a nest nearby.
Enjoying the island’s wildlife Fulmars
A slice of life
The nutrient-rich seas round here are good fishing grounds, especially for sprats, herring and sand eels. They provide a feast for hungry chicks and their hard-working parents.
Fulmars are mates for life returning to the same nest site every year. Puffins rear their chicks in shallow burrows, each longer than your arm.
Razorbills are anti-social and like plenty of space. They nest around the edges of the seabird colonies.
Guillemots choose really narrow ledges. If knocked, the egg spins, hopefully to stop it rolling off the edge.
Shags build large, untidy nests cemented with their guano. They often add things they have found as decoration – flowers, rope, rubbish and even dead rabbits.
Meet the hook-nosed
sea pigs
That’s the Latin name for the Atlantic or grey seal, superbly adapted for life at sea but rather ungainly on land. The May is their largest colony in eastern Britain. Around 100 grey seals hang about around the island throughout the summer. Good places to see them are in the water below the cliffs on the west side and hauled up at low tide on the Maiden Rocks at the south end. Look for a bobbing head on the water and count how long it stays underwater before coming up for air. Listen for the grunts and heavy breathing of a snoozing seal or their eerie wailing ‘song’ that haunts the island.
Over 2000 seal pups are born here from mid-October to December. They take over much of the island from boulder beaches to grassy slopes and muddy pools. Although the May is closed to visitors at that time, you can view the action live from new born pups to fighting males through a video link at the Scottish Seabird Centre.
www.seabird.org
The seal colony is a living laboratory. Since 1982 research here has explored questions like why a third of pups fail to reach maturity and how mother and baby interact. Each year researchers spend six weeks getting up close and personal with the seals.
Grey seals
May time
People have visited the May for over 5000 years: to fish, pray and tend the light.
669 AD St Ethernan dies. His shrine on the May attracts monks and pilgrims.
1145 King David I founds a monastery on the island to pray for the souls of kings.
1320 Although the monks have moved to the mainland, a candle still burns on the shrine.
1500 The monks welcome half a million pilgrims including King James IV on a picnic.
1550 The island is sold and the ruined priory is turned into a tower house.
1636 Scotland’s first lighthouse lights its beacon.
1715 Three hundred fleeing Jacobites are marooned for eight days without food.
1730 John Wishart, the last villager, is buried on the island.
1816 Robert Stevenson’s lighthouse replaces the beacon.
1844 The Low Light adds its signals to help sailors avoid the North Carr rocks.
1886 The Main Light is powered by electricity rather than by oil. The South Horn and engine room are built.
1914 The May becomes a naval base guarding the entrances to the Forth in both World Wars.
1938 The North Horn is built. The fog horns are powered by compressed air from storage tanks.
1956 The island becomes a National Nature Reserve.
1972 The lighthouse keepers’ families move to the mainland.
1989 The Main Light is automated and the last lighthouse keepers leave the island. Check our website for factsheets detailing the island’s history.
www.nnr-scotland.org.uk/isle-of-may
Monastic life on the island
The beacon
Just dropping in
Birds call in at the May while migrating between wintering and breeding grounds. Some virtually non-stop flights are
thousands of miles long.
Here they rest, feed and find their bearings, if blown off course. Huge flocks of birds like goldcrest and fieldfare appear to fall from the sky.
In spring and autumn the island is a twitcher’s paradise. From 1907 two birdwatchers – Evelyn Baxter and
Leonora Rintoul – studied migration here when one of the only ways to identify birds was to shoot them! Their work led to Britain’s second bird observatory being established at the Low Light. Now happily other non-lethal methods are used to catch and ring the birds.
You too may spot a May first. One visitor reported a ‘strange pink bird’ which turned out to be a two-barred crossbill. Please report any unusual
sightings to staff.
‘Like ringing a set of
bagpipes smelling of fish’
This is how the Reserve Managerdescribed a recent encounter with a greater black-backed gull.
A lot of what is known about seabirds has been discovered on the May – where they go, what they eat, whether numbers are increasing and how they are affected by fishing and pollution. The May’s bird count records stretch back over 40 years. Researchers and volunteers also monitor migrating birds through ringing and satellite tracking.
This data features in the media. Many stories like the puffin colony make good news as our nesting couples have increased from under 20 in 1960 to over 45,000 today.
You may notice some strange equipment around the island. The large wire cages are called Heliogoland traps. Birds are harmlessly caught with these and mist nets; their vital statistics are recorded and they are ringed before release. Look for a coloured ring with a number on a shag’s leg: 90% of shags on the May wear these darvic rings to allow us to track their lifestyle.
Every summer a dozen or so seabird researchers live in Fluke Street and work out of the island’s bird hides. Chat to staff about what you see. Your observations may help research.
The Low Light
For more information
please contact:
Scottish Natural Heritage 46 Crossgate
Cupar
Fife KY15 5HS. Tel: 01334 654038 www.nnr-scotland.org.uk Follow the Isle of May blog isleofmaynnr.wordpress.com
Photographs: Lor
ne Gill/SNH, David Pickett. Illustrations: Ross Associates. ISBN 978-1-85397-810-4 © Scottish Natural H
eritage 2016.
Food for thought – what you do at home
may impact on the island’s seabirds.
Imagine the May with empty burrows and silent cliffs. Seabirds depend on you and your lifestyle for survival. Climate change is affecting the island’s seabirds now.
Eat sustainably caught fish in season to ensure that there is plenty for seabirds too.
Never throw litter into the sea and recycle your rubbish including plastics. Your waste can be a killer, ending up in a seabird’s stomach. ‘Flying dustbins’ like fulmars and gulls eat almost anything.
Take part in a beach clean-up. Find out how you can get involved at www.mcsuk.org (Marine Conservation Society).
