Young Manx shearwaters are learning the night sky over Canna again

Young Manx shearwaters are being given a chance to nest again on the Isle of Canna. The BBC reported on October 29, 2026, that the National Trust for Scotland has moved chicks from the neighboring Isle of Rum, where a large colony still breeds.

Canna, in the Small Isles, once held about 3,000 breeding adults. Rats reached the island on ships about a century ago and, by the 1990s, were eating so many eggs that the colony collapsed. Trappers from New Zealand helped clear the rats, and the island has been free of them since 2005. Over the past two years, 40 young birds have been carried across and settled in burrows on Canna. Rum still holds about a quarter of the world's breeding pairs, at least 120,000 of them.

Ellie Owen, the trust's senior seabird officer, told BBC Radio Scotland that the work meant nights on the hills and a lot of trial and error. She said people on Canna missed the birds' calls over the village and hoped to hear that sound again. The chicks are closely related to albatrosses, live mostly at sea, and are thought to steer by the sun, moon, and stars. A film about the first year of the project is planned for 2027. The move is a start, not proof that a breeding colony has already returned.