Bird Watching

Best for Birds

Loch na Muilne Reserve

The Isle of Lewis, and the wider Outer Hebrides archipelego, is a haven for birds and a magnet for birdwatchers and ornithologists alike.  Make our home your perfect base.
Our home is located on the edge of one of the most northerly and westerly RSPB Reserves at Loch na Muilne.
Loch na Muilne is a fantastic place to see a variety of breeding birds. During spring and summer, its most special inhabitants are red-necked phalaropes – tiny wading birds which feed by swimming on the loch in search of insects. Unusually, the female is more colourful than the male and performs most of the courtship rituals.
You can also see snipe, golden plovers and dunlins settling down to nest. This sensitive area is very important to their UK breeding populations.
You can check out the seasonal highlights of the reserve here.

Other Great Locations

Loch an Duna, Bragar
There are many other great opportunities to spot rare birds, least of all simply by looking up or around your feet!  More great locations can be found on the great website of Fat Birder where they give you a range of spotting sights that are from 2 miles from our home to 20 miles.
The Western Isles, otherwise known as the Outer Hebrides, are a group of islands lying in a crescent about 40 miles off Scotland’s West Coast. The name Hebrides is derived from the Norse Havbredey, the “isles on the edge of the sea”. The islands extend about 130 miles from north to south with remote outliers such as North Rona, lying a further 40 miles north of Lewis, St. Kilda, 41 miles to the west of N. Uist and the Flannan Isles, some 16 miles west of Lewis.
Some vital statistics give some idea of the scale of the archipelago. There are 119 named islands although only 14 are permanently occupied. The land area is 290,000 ha. and there are over 6,000lochs and lochans (15.8% of the UK’s area of standing water). The largest of these is Loch Langavat in Lewis (8.9 sq. km.), but the majority are quite small (less than 0.25 sq.km.). The islands have an important indigenous avifauna and because of the islands’ geographical location, they attract migrating birds from many parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

Great Birding locations on Lewis

  • BUTT OF LEWIS (NB520668)
  • LOCH STIAPAVAT (NB520669)
  • LOCH ORDAIS (NB283488)
  • CARLOWAY AND CALLANISH
  • STORNOWAY (NB420325)
  • STEINISH (NB450336)
  • LOCH BRANAHUIE AND BRAIGH (NB473324)
  • TIUMPAN HEAD (NB574377)
  • NORTH TOLSTA, GRESS AND COL
  • BIRDWATCHING IN HARRIS
  • OFFSHORE ISLANDS