The night sky over Canna is calling again: 40 shearwater chicks fledged in a European first

Winnie MacKinnon grew up on the Isle of Canna hearing Manx shearwaters scream home across the night sky — until rats nearly wiped out the colony in the 1990s and the sky fell silent. The rats were removed in 2005, and now the National Trust for Scotland's 'Return of the Manx' project, the first of its kind in Europe, is bringing the birds back properly: 40 chicks have been carefully moved from the thriving colony on Rùm — which holds a quarter of the world's breeding population — hand-raised in artificial burrows on Canna, and fledged in the project's first two years, timed so each chick imprints on Canna's skies. The chicks navigate by the stars on their first flight. They should return as breeding adults in five to seven years — patience, measured in bird generations. 'From ideas on paper to witnessing our first new generations fledging from Canna, the project has been a real journey,' said senior seabird officer Ellie Owen.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: institutional program