Little Skellig, Ireland
About eight and a half miles off of the southwest coast of Ireland’s Kerry Peninsula sits a pair of islands that appear almost as day and night. Skellig (meaning “rock”) Michael (aka Big Skellig) is composed of dark stone with patches of green spread about. It is the site of a monastic settlement established in the sixth century and occupied for hundreds of years. By the sixteenth century, it had become a destination where pilgrims could perform public penance following the Stations of the Cross. The first of numerous Viking attacks came in 812, though it was not an easy target, as the surrounding waters are often turbulent and the island topography is rugged and steep with the only access to the colony being hundreds of steps hand hewn into the Old Red Sandstone bedrock. The drystone constructed beehive huts, which survive today, are about six hundred feet above sea level. Sharing the island are thousands of seabirds, including Atlantic puffins, blacklegged kittiwakes, razorbills and common murres.
Little Skellig (pictured), from a distance, appears to be a snow covered monolith jutting up through the ocean’s surface. Closer approach reveals a gannetry of almost unfathomable scope. Four years ago the census came up with twenty-seven thousand breeding pairs of northern gannets. That did not include subadult non-breeders or the one chick each in most of the twenty-seven thousand nests. Like their close relatives the boobies, gannets do not have a brood patch with which to warm their eggs and their young. Instead, they stand on the single egg with their large webbed feet. They direct warm body core blood to their feet to incubate and as the chick is ready to emerge, the adults transfer the egg to the top of their feet to keep from hindering it from coming to the light of day. Once they fledge, gannets spend up to six years at sea before returning to their natal breeding colony, once again to set foot on solid ground.
This afternoon, we toured Ireland’s famous Ring of Kerry. Broad vistas of verdantly covered hills, lakes and waterfalls graced our eyes. Visits to Muckross House and Gardens, a national park, and the lovely town of Kenmare completed a very full day.
About eight and a half miles off of the southwest coast of Ireland’s Kerry Peninsula sits a pair of islands that appear almost as day and night. Skellig (meaning “rock”) Michael (aka Big Skellig) is composed of dark stone with patches of green spread about. It is the site of a monastic settlement established in the sixth century and occupied for hundreds of years. By the sixteenth century, it had become a destination where pilgrims could perform public penance following the Stations of the Cross. The first of numerous Viking attacks came in 812, though it was not an easy target, as the surrounding waters are often turbulent and the island topography is rugged and steep with the only access to the colony being hundreds of steps hand hewn into the Old Red Sandstone bedrock. The drystone constructed beehive huts, which survive today, are about six hundred feet above sea level. Sharing the island are thousands of seabirds, including Atlantic puffins, blacklegged kittiwakes, razorbills and common murres.
Little Skellig (pictured), from a distance, appears to be a snow covered monolith jutting up through the ocean’s surface. Closer approach reveals a gannetry of almost unfathomable scope. Four years ago the census came up with twenty-seven thousand breeding pairs of northern gannets. That did not include subadult non-breeders or the one chick each in most of the twenty-seven thousand nests. Like their close relatives the boobies, gannets do not have a brood patch with which to warm their eggs and their young. Instead, they stand on the single egg with their large webbed feet. They direct warm body core blood to their feet to incubate and as the chick is ready to emerge, the adults transfer the egg to the top of their feet to keep from hindering it from coming to the light of day. Once they fledge, gannets spend up to six years at sea before returning to their natal breeding colony, once again to set foot on solid ground.
This afternoon, we toured Ireland’s famous Ring of Kerry. Broad vistas of verdantly covered hills, lakes and waterfalls graced our eyes. Visits to Muckross House and Gardens, a national park, and the lovely town of Kenmare completed a very full day.
