Papa Westray

Our last day on Orkney and we saved the best until last. We took the eight seater 15 minute Loganair flight to the remote Orkney island of Papa Westray, which included a brief stop to offload passengers at the nearby island of Westray before resuming with the shortest scheduled flight in the world, all of one minute from Westray to Papa Westray. Beautiful scenery, breathtaking sandy beaches and turquoise seas and glorious weather. A 10 mile walk around the island taking in the RSPB reserve at North Hill and the oldest surviving stone house in northern Europe, Knap of Howar which was occupied 3500BC and is even older than the houses at Skara Brae which we visited last week and which make the pyramids and Stonehenge seem like modern developments. I managed to find my own white-tailed eagle, apparently only the 7th record this year on the island following no records at all last year, and we visited the monument to the site of the last great auk nest in the UK.

Coming into land at Papa Westray.

Our plane at Papa Westray airport.

Almost as soon as we stepped off the plane this white-tailed eagle flew past mobbed by arctic terns. Unfortunately I just wasn't prepared and my camera was still in my bag, etc.

Our first destination was North Hill RSPB, home to close on 100 pairs of great and arctic skuas, hundreds of arctic terns and with a wonderful coastline with black guillmeots everywhere.

If you stick to the footpath around the coast, the arctic skuas will occasionally half heartedly attack you. However if you try walking away from the coast they will get far more aggressive.

Bonxies.

I always get excited when I seen wrens on a remote island, but so far as I know, the birds on Papa Westray are not considered a separate race to those on the mainland. Maybe one day though...

Surprisingly perhaps, although wrens are quite common on this island, I haven't seen them anywhere else in the Orkney archipelago.

Eiders.

The last great auk in the UK was killed on St Kilda in 1840, but the last nest was on Papa Westray in 1813.

Just like on North Ronaldsay, fulmars breed on the ground here, though perhaps not in quite the numbers.

The Knap of Howar, along with Skara Brae this was the most impressive archeological site we visited in Orkney.