St Abb's Head
St Abb's Head on the Berwickshire coast of Scotland is a dramatic headland of volcanic rocks rising over 90 metres from the North Sea, a National Nature Reserve managed by the National Trust for Scotland whose seabird colony, the most important on the eastern Scottish coast south of the Firth of Forth, makes it one of the principal seabird watching locations in Scotland. The combination of the dramatic cliff scenery, the breeding seabirds and the clear water of the St Abbs marine reserve below makes this one of the finest coastal visits in the southeast of Scotland. The seabird colony supports over 50,000 breeding seabirds including guillemot, razorbill, kittiwake, fulmar, shag, herring gull and a small number of puffins, concentrated on the stack and cliff ledges that provide the characteristic Berwickshire cliff scenery. The guillemot and kittiwake colonies are the most numerous and the most vocal, their calls audible from a considerable distance, and the clifftop viewing points provide excellent observation of the crowded ledges during the breeding season from May to August. The marine reserve below the cliffs is one of the clearest and most biologically diverse temperate waters in the British Isles, the combination of the rocky reef habitat and the relatively unpolluted North Sea water creating conditions that attract divers from across Britain. The kelp forests, anemone communities and fish populations of the reserve have been the subject of sustained scientific monitoring and provide a baseline understanding of temperate marine ecology. The coastal walking on the cliffs south from St Abbs village toward Fast Castle, a dramatically positioned ruin on a stack below the cliff top, provides excellent cliff scenery in a landscape quite different from the more gentle shores elsewhere on the east coast.