Shearwaters

10 places to see and hear shearwaters in the wild, in 8 countries from United Kingdom to Cabo Verde: when each one peaks, where to go on your own, what it costs and what you will hear. Wild animals only, no zoos.

Best time, place by place

Where to go, north to south

• Manx shearwaters returning at nightUnited Kingdom · Nocturnal · peak 15 May–15 JulHundreds of thousands of birds crashing in, with cackling, choking, hoarse calls from the air and burrows all around you.
• Shearwater colonies: Îles d'Hyères and LavezziFrance · Nocturnal · peak 15 Apr–15 JulWailing and cackling shearwaters arriving over the cliffs at night to their burrows — Port-Cros holds about 90% of France's Yelkouan population — with the Mediterranean swell below.
• Shearwater colonies at night, Lastovo archipelagoCroatia · Seabird colony · peak 15 May–31 JulScopoli's shearwaters wailing and cackling overhead and from burrows — the 'crying baby' chorus of Mediterranean islets; Yelkouan's higher nasal calls; waves on rock, cicadas fading at dusk.
• Scopoli's & Yelkouan shearwater coloniesItaly · Nocturnal · peak 1 May–31 JulScopoli's 'crying baby' wails from thousands of birds arriving over cliffs — one of the Mediterranean's strangest sounds.
• Balearic shearwater & storm petrel islandsSpain · Seabird colony · peak 15 Mar–15 JunHoarse, cackling Balearic shearwaters arriving to cliff burrows after dark, storm petrels purring in cave crevices, Audouin's gull colonies and Eleonora's falcons screaming over the sea in late summer.
• Cory's shearwater colonies of the CanariesSpain · Nocturnal · peak 15 May–30 Sep and 20 Oct–15 NovThe wailing, sobbing 'pardela' chorus from thousands of birds over sea cliffs — the sound behind the Canarian mermaid legends — with the Atlantic swell and Bulwer's petrels' soft barking.
• Zino's petrel calling over Pico do Arieiro at nightPortugal · Nocturnal · peak 15 May–15 JulOne of Europe's rarest sounds: the long, mournful, tawny-owl-like moan of Zino's petrels circling the summit ridge in the dark, answered from the nesting ledges, with the occasional whimper and the quieter cackle of Manx shearwaters lower down — above a sea of cloud, in total silence otherwise.
• Berlengas: Cory's shearwaters calling over the island at nightPortugal · Seabird colony · peak 15 Jun–31 AugHundreds of Cory's shearwaters wailing and sobbing over the island in the dark — the Atlantic's strangest chorus — with the yellow-legged gull colony grumbling, shags croaking on the ledges and the swell in the sea caves. On the mainland, the same birds raft silently off Cabo Carvoeiro at dusk.
• Autumn seabird passage off Cap Rhir, north of AgadirMorocco · Migration · peak 15 Sep–31 Oct and 1 Mar–30 AprA visual event: hundreds of Scopoli's shearwaters shearing past the lighthouse point, skuas chasing terns, and now and then the park's bald ibis flapping by at eye level. Surf on the rocks, wind, and fishermen on the ledges below.
• Raso and Branco — Cape Verde shearwater islets and the Raso larkCabo Verde · Seabird colony · peak 1 Jun–30 SepA Macaronesian petrel night in the tropics: thousands of Cape Verde shearwaters wailing and cackling as they come in off the sea, the rush of wings down the canyons close overhead, geckos chirping into the small hours, tropicbird screams by day. No people, no engines, no lights.

More: every animal and kind · what is on in October