The Top Ten in Hebridean Wildlife!

Puffin

With the biggest colony of puffins in the UK, the Hebrides is a fantastic place to view these charming, comical birds. Thanks partly to the successful publishers of the same name, the puffin is an iconic species that everyone could have a go at describing: with their rainbow beaks, white breasts and faces, black backs and black eye sockets, they are unmistakable.

Breeding on offshore islands, if you want to see puffins up close, your best bet is to take a wildlife cruise around the outer islands. Their numbers will overwhelm you and they are often estimated in 'orders' of abundance as they are impossible to count.

They depart for the open sea in August and return again in February and March. There are large colonies on St Kilda, the Shiants, the Flannan Isles, Mingulay and North Rona, where they live in burrows instead of nests.