Bass Rock East Lothian
The Bass Rock is a volcanic island of dramatic appearance rising from the Firth of Forth near North Berwick in East Lothian, a 107-metre plug of basalt whose sheer white-encrusted cliffs are home to one of the largest single-rock gannet colonies in the world. The island supports a breeding colony of approximately 150,000 northern gannets, so many that the species was formally named Morus bassanus in recognition of the rock's primacy as a gannet site. The colony is visible and audible from the shore at North Berwick, but boat trips from the harbour provide a close encounter with the birds and the island of quite extraordinary intensity.
The gannet colony occupies almost every available surface of the island during the breeding season from February to October, the birds packed so densely onto every ledge, slope and flat surface that the white guano-encrusted rock is effectively invisible beneath the mass of white plumage. The noise, the smell and the ceaseless activity of the colony on a calm summer day create a wildlife spectacle of genuine primordial power, quite unlike any other seabird experience available in Britain. The gannets' aerial fishing dives, plunging from heights of up to thirty metres into the Firth with folded wings, provide constant dramatic display in the waters surrounding the rock.
The island also has a considerable historical and political significance. A castle was built on the rock in the fourteenth century, exploiting its natural defensibility, and the Bass Rock gained particular notoriety in the late seventeenth century as a state prison for Covenanters and Jacobites. In 1691 a small party of Jacobite prisoners managed to seize control of the castle from their captors and hold it for three years in defiance of the Williamite government, one of the more remarkable episodes of resistance in Scottish history.
The Scottish Seabird Centre at North Berwick provides excellent background to the Bass Rock and the wildlife of the Firth of Forth, with live camera feeds from the colony and boat trips departing from the harbour.