Puffins On Isle Of May On Visit To Outer Firth Of Forth Scotland

Tour Scotland travel video of Puffins on the Isle Of May, located 5 miles off the Fife coast on visit to the outer Firth of Forth. Puffins annually migrate to Scotland, settling all over the country's rugged coastline from North Berwick in the Southeast to Handa off the coast of Sutherland and the Shetland Islands. Known affectionately by some Scot as the clowns of the sea, puffins typically arrive in Scotland in late March or early April. Scotland’s smallest and most distinctive breeding auk species with black upper parts and white under parts. Adults have a distinctive rainbow coloured deep bill as well as white cheeks and a conspicuous, clown like black stripe down over each red ringed eye. They nest underground in borrows. The May Isle has long been a focal point of the nearby fishing communities. Annually, the wives and children of the small village of Cellardyke were taken to the May Isle for a picnic by the fishermen. On 1 July 1837 one such trip turned to tragedy when one of the small row boats used to transport them to Kirkhaven harbour overturned leading to the loss of 13 lives. A proper lighthouse was built on the island in 1816 by Robert Stevenson. During the height of the breeding season, over 200,000 seabirds nest on the island, including puffins, black-legged kittiwakes, razorbills, guillemots, shags, fulmars, oystercatchers, eider ducks, and various species of tern and gull. The Firth of Forth, Scottish Gaelic: Linne Foirthe, is the estuary, firth in Scots, of several Scottish rivers including the River Forth. It meets the North Sea with Fife on the north coast and Lothian on the south. Firth is a cognate of fjord, a Norse word meaning a narrow inlet. It was known as Bodotria in Roman times. In the Norse sagas it was known as the Myrkvifiörd. An early Welsh name is Merin Iodeo, or the " Sea of Iudeu. " The drainage basin for the Firth of Forth covers a wide geographic area including places as far from the shore as Ben Lomond, Cumbernauld, Harthill, Penicuik and the edges of Gleneagles Golf Course. Many towns line the shores, as well as the petrochemical complexes at Grangemouth, commercial docks at Leith, former oil rig construction yards at Methil, the ship-breaking facility at Inverkeithing and the naval dockyard at Rosyth, along with numerous other industrial areas, including the Forth Bridgehead area, encompassing Rosyth, Inverkeithing and the southern edge of Dunfermline, Burntisland, Kirkcaldy, Bo'ness and Leven The Isle of May is the largest of the islands of the Firth of Forth. It is noted amongst naturalists for its colonies of seabirds, its migrant birds and its colony of grey seals. Designated a national nature reserve in 1956, it is now recognised as an important seabird research centre. The island is accessed during the spring and summer when a regular boat service operates from Anstruther and Crail to the landing at Kirkhaven. All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

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