Isle of May Lighthouse

The Isle of May lies eight kilometres off the Fife coast in the outer Firth of Forth. This narrow island, just 1.5 kilometres long and half a kilometre wide, is owned by NatureScot as a national nature reserve. No one lives there permanently now, though monks once ran St Adrian’s Priory in the Middle Ages. The only way to reach the island is by ferry from Anstruther, Dunbar or North Berwick, a 45-minute crossing. Around eleven thousand visitors arrive each year, mostly daytrippers, while a few stay at the bird observatory for a week. From October to Easter the island closes to protect seal pups, but live cameras let visitors watch seabirds and seals without disturbance.

The island’s cliffs rise to forty-five metres on the west, while the east shore has three small beaches—Pilgrims Haven, Kirkhaven and Silver Sands. A northern peninsula called Rona becomes an island at high tide. Geologists note the dark-grey basalt rock cut by east–west faults that form steep gullies. The lighthouse, its keepers’ houses and other buildings are listed for their historic interest. St Adrian’s Chapel, a scheduled monument, marks an early Christian site founded in the ninth century. Viking raids are recorded in the Orkneyinga saga, including Sweyn Asleifsson’s plundering of the monastery in 875.

Visitors find one of Britain’s largest puffin colonies nesting in cliff burrows each summer. Up to two hundred thousand seabirds gather here, including kittiwakes, razorbills, guillemots and terns. Grey and harbour seals breed on the island, with about three thousand pups born annually. Scientists monitor the birds’ diet and numbers as part of a long-term study. Rare migrants such as black-winged stilts and calandra larks sometimes appear. Whales and porpoises are seen offshore, while house mice and rabbits—introduced by medieval monks—live on the island.