Shiant Isles
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The Shiant Isles (Scottish Gaelic: Na h-Eileanan Mora), also known in Gaelic as "The Enchanted Isles" (Na h-Eileanan Seunta) are a privately owned island group in the Minch, east of Harris in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The main islands are Eilean Garbh and Eilean an Tighe, which were inhabited until 1901 and are actually joined by a narrow isthmus, and Eilean Mhuire.
The islands are known for their dolerite columns, similar to but much larger than those on Staffa, and for their population of seabirds, including a few great skuas and tens of thousands of puffins. The islands are also home to a colony of black rats: apart from one or two small islands in the Firth of Forth, the Shiants are the only place in the UK where the black rat or ship's rat (Rattus rattus) can still be found. There are thought to be about 3,000 rats over-wintering on the islands.
Author Compton MacKenzie owned the islands in the 1920's. In the 1930s they were acquired by Nigel Nicolson, then an undergraduate at Oxford, later a writer, publisher and politician. Nicolson's son, the writer Adam Nicolson, published the definitive book on the islands, Sea Room. The Shiants now belong to Adam's son Tom. Sheep belonging to a Lewis crofter graze all three islands. The simple bothy restored by Nigel Nicolson on Eilean an Tighe is currently the only habitable structure on the islands.
[edit] Bibliography
- Nicolson, Adam (2001). Sea Room: an island life. Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-257164-1.
- Benvie, Niall (2004). Scotland's Wildlife. Aurum Press. ISBN 1-85-410978-2.
[edit] External links
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