Ireland: Little Skellig Island & Gannets

The rugged island nest to Skellig Michael is called Little Skellig, and it’s really nothing more than an exposed crag of sharp cliffs and rocks. While Skellig Michael belongs to the puffins, Little Skellig belongs entirely to the Northern Gannet. It hosts roughly 35,000 breeding pairs, making it Ireland’s largest gannet colony and the second-largest anywhere in the world. Landing on Little Skellig is strictly banned due to the fragility and density of the colony, but you. A cruise the cliffs in a boat. From a distance, the island looks like it is capped in snow, but getting closer, you realize that it’s actually tens of thousands of large white birds packed shoulder-to-shoulder on every horizontal ledge, crack, and pinnacle. Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus) are the truly fascinating and beautiful and are the largest seabirds in Ireland and the UK with a massive wingspan of up to 1.8 m (6 feet). Gannets are famous for their spectacular hunting technique of plunge-diving – they free-fall from heights of up to 30-40 m (100 -130 feet) above the water and hit the surface at up to 100 kmh (62 mph). Gannets mate for life, lay only one egg per year, and live around 25 years, and usually die from going blind – their eyes sustain immense damage from all the plunging into the water.