Kittiwake Rissa tridactyla

Common breeding resident, passage migrant and to a lesser extent, winter visitor.

The first record of this species on Foula was by Low in 1774 (cited in Pennington et al. 2004) who describes the Foula colony among a number of others on Shetland.

The first accurate count was made in 1961 by Jackson (1966) in 1961, who estimated there to be between 5000 and 8000 pairs. A survey between 1968 – 1970 counted 5, 460 nests (Pennington et al. 2004).

Since these first surveys, the number of nests has decreased slowly on the island. In 2004, only 942 AONs were counted, although this was up slightly in 2006. Breeding success has been poor to very poor, recently. Skua predation is possibly hindering success but there is now substantial evidence that points to the lack of the birds’ main diet, sand eels.