Seabird colonies
26 seabird colonies along the East Atlantic Flyway, from Norway to Angola: 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
Runde bird cliffs: puffins at LundeuraKittiwake colonies screaming from the cliffs, puffin growls at the burrows, gannet colony grating from Rundebranden, eagles yelping, surf below; storm petrels purring from stone walls after midnight.
Hornøya and Gjesværstappan: Arctic seabird cliffsA guillemot wall at arm's length: massed growling and trumpeting, kittiwake screaming, puffin grunts, Brünnich's guillemots' lower calls; Arctic surf; at Gjesværstappan the gannet colony's grating and the constant wing-noise of puffins by the hundred thousand.
Puffin arrival day on Lovund and the Røst coloniesThe wing-roar and growling of a puffin colony wheeling over the slope, kittiwakes, eagles; on Røst, Leach's and storm petrels at night; the Atlantic.
Svalbard: Arctic summer cliffs, walrus and ternsLittle auk colonies — a shrill, laughing chorus from scree slopes by the hundred thousand; Brünnich's guillemot walls (Alkefjellet) with birds pouring off 100 m dolerite cliffs; arctic terns in a screaming defensive cloud in Adventdalen; walrus grunts and snorts on a haul-out; calving glaciers.
Stora Karlsö: Baltic auk cliffs and the guillemot jumpThe growling, gurgling roar of a packed guillemot colony on limestone ledges, razorbill rasps, kittiwake-free Baltic quiet behind it; in late June the thin whistles of chicks calling to parents as they leap into the sea.
Ertholmene: Denmark's only guillemot and razorbill colonyGuillemots' growling and razorbills' rattle from Græsholm's rocks 100 m across the sound, eider crooning, gull colonies, the Baltic; at night on Christiansø, migrants and the fortress silence.
Tyne kittiwakes — the urban colonyAbout 800 pairs of oceanic gulls calling 'kitti-wake' from the Tyne Bridge girders and the Baltic art gallery ledges, echoing between the bridges over the river and city traffic.
Seabird citiesA wall of seabird calls: gannet grating, kittiwakes calling their name, guillemot growls, puffin burrow moans, sea and wind below.
Irish seabird cities: Cliffs of Moher, Great Saltee and the SkelligsThe roar of 20,000 guillemots on the Moher ledges with kittiwakes screaming 'kitti-wake' and fulmars cackling; the Atlantic 200 m below; on Little Skellig the deafening, continuous growl of a gannet city heard over the engine; choughs' ringing calls on the cliff top.
Helgoland Lummenfelsen: guillemots, gannets and the 'Lummensprung'Germany's only seabird cliff: guillemot growls, kittiwake screaming, gannet colony grating, fulmar cackles; at the jump, chicks peeping and adults calling them down to the sea 40 m below.
Sept-Îles: gannets on Rouzic, puffins and auksFrance's only gannet colony (about 14,000 pairs on Rouzic) as a wall of grating calls from the boat, puffins and kittiwakes on the sea, and the Atlantic swell against the granite.
Banc d'Arguin terns & Arcachon brent geeseA grating Sandwich tern colony of thousands of pairs on a sandbank in the Atlantic swell; in winter, the rolling 'rronk' of brent flocks on the eelgrass beds.
Gull, tern and heron colonies of the Grande CariçaieA wall of black-headed gull screaming from the artificial islands, terns overhead, cormorant grunts, reed warbler and Savi's warbler from the largest reed-belt in Switzerland, bittern booming at dusk, tree frogs, beaver tail-slaps.
Shearwater colonies at night, Lastovo archipelagoScopoli'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.
Balearic shearwater & storm petrel islandsHoarse, 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.
Islas Cíes & Ons seabird coloniesOne of the world's largest yellow-legged gull colonies in full cry on the cliff tops, shags grunting on the ledges, and at night the recently established Cory's shearwaters and storm petrels over the Atlantic side.
Ebro Delta: Audouin's gulls, terns and flamingosAudouin's gull colony (historically over half the world population at Punta de la Banya) as a nasal, laughing wall of sound, tern colonies screaming over the salt pans, flamingos honking across the lagoons, and frogs in the rice fields at night.
Berlengas: Cory's shearwaters calling over the island at nightHundreds 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.
Raso and Branco — Cape Verde shearwater islets and the Raso larkA 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.
Seabird and spoonbill colonies on the Banc d'Arguin islandsRoyal and Caspian tern colonies screaming, pelican colonies grunting, spoonbill bill-clacking at the nest, and slender-billed gull chatter across the water from a stationary boat.
Tern and gull colonies of the Langue de BarbarieA packed royal and Caspian tern colony screaming on a sand islet in the Senegal river mouth, gull colonies underneath, and the Atlantic surf on the spit a few hundred metres away.
Red-billed tropicbird colony, Îles de la MadeleineTropicbirds' rasping, ratcheting display screams as pairs circle the basalt cliffs of Sarpan island a few metres overhead, surf in the sea caves, and Dakar's hum across 4 km of water.
Tanji beach and the Bijol Islands — terns, gulls and the fish-landing roostA gull-and-tern roost of thousands screaming over the fish-landing beach as pirogues come in, the market crowd, the smokehouses, and across the water the Bijol colonies — The Gambia's only breeding seabirds.
Île Alcatraz — the only brown booby colony between Cabo Verde and São ToméA tropical booby rock: the braying and whistling of thousands of brown boobies, the grating roar of a royal tern colony, wings everywhere, guano and fish — a sound that exists nowhere else on the West African mainland coast. Only the sea and your own outboard compete.
Sherbro and the Turtle Islands — terns, waders and turtle beachesTern and wader roosts on white sandbanks between eight Sherbro-speaking fishing islands, surf, and the villages' evening singing; dolphins in the channels.
The Tinhosas: the only great seabird colony of the eastern tropical AtlanticA sooty tern colony of this size is a wall of sound audible from a kilometre downwind: the 'wide-awake' calls of over a quarter of a million birds, noddies' rattles, booby honks, surf on bare rock. From a drifting boat with the engine off it is one of the great seabird sound events of the Atlantic.