Welcome to Manx Shearwater.co.uk
This site is dedicated to the preservation of the Manx Shearwater that visits the Isle of Rum (Lochaber) in the Inner Hebrides Scotland.
Rum is an NNR about 20 kilometres west of Mallaig Scotland and is the biggest of the Small Isles. It is designated an SPA for its unique population of Manx Shearwaters holding between a quarter and a third of the world's population.
The Manx Shearwaters spend most of the year at sea returning to land only to breed. They nest in burrows and under boulders and come ashore only under the hour's of darkness in order to evade predators and feed their fledglings, the birds then migrate and spend the winter in South America.
The Manx Shearwater breed exclusively on islands, usually free of rats that are dependent on eggs, chicks and adults. Those few colonies that occur on islands with rats are generally small and limited in distribution. This exception over the years had been on Rum, where the largest single colony in the world appeared to have evaded the rats, or at least had a limited impact on the breeding birds as they nesting on the slopes of the island's mountains, Trollval, Askival and Hallaval, at altitudes of more than 400m. (up to more than 700 metres)
This trend has changed and the Manx Shearwaters are now under threat on the Isle of Rum from rats going by the data collected over the last few years.
Manx shearwater breed on the mountainside unlike other colonies which are virtually at sea level. Annual monitoring of around 100 burrows has taken place since 1994 on Hallival. In 1998 the report author Andrew D K Ramsay first saw rats in the colony during the breeding season. It had been thought that rats came up to the colony to scavenge failed eggs and dead young at the end of the season in September. The evidence for rats in the colony and having a detrimental effect on the Shearwaters grew and SNH decided that studies had to be undertaken to assess the problem. Since 2006 monitoring of the breeding of Manx Shearwaters on Rum has been contracted out.
