Where To See Puffins In Ireland and Northern Ireland

Ireland is a single island with two jurisdictions, and for the puffin watcher, this geography works entirely in your favour. The island’s Atlantic coastline, from the basalt cliffs of County Antrim in the north to the extraordinary rock pinnacles of County Kerry in the south-west, holds some of the least-crowded and most dramatic puffin colonies in the British Isles.

The three sites in this guide span the full length of the island. Rathlin Island sits off the Antrim coast in Northern Ireland, reached by ferry from Ballycastle and is home to one of the most accessible puffin experiences anywhere on the island of Ireland.

The Great Saltee Island lies off the south-east tip of County Wexford in the Republic, a quiet seabird island that most visitors travelling between Dublin and Cork drive straight past without knowing it exists.

And Skellig Michael rises from the Atlantic twelve kilometres off the Kerry coast. This is a dramatic rock pinnacle with a sixth-century monastic settlement on its upper slopes and puffins in their thousands nesting in the crevices around the ancient stone beehive huts.

This guide covers all three, including what each place is like, the practical realities of visiting, and how to make the most of a trip to some of the finest wildlife coastlines in Europe.

Why are Ireland and Northern Ireland good for puffins?

The west and north coasts of Ireland face directly into the Atlantic, and the combination of rich seas, undisturbed offshore islands, and a relatively sparse visitor infrastructure gives the puffin colonies here a quality that is increasingly hard to find at better-known British sites.

On Rathlin or the Saltees in June, you will not be one of hundreds of people watching the same stretch of cliff. You will most likely be one of a handful, with the birds going about their business with the unhurried confidence of animals that have never had much reason to be nervous.

The three colonies in this guide each have a distinct character. Rathlin, in Northern Ireland, is the most accessible with a regular passenger ferry from a busy Antrim coast town, a purpose-built RSPB seabird viewing gallery, and the easy pairing with the Giant’s Causeway makes it a genuinely straightforward day out.

The Saltees, in the Republic, are privately owned and opened generously to visitors, with puffins at close range on the cliff ledges above the landing beach.

Skellig Michael is in a different category from either. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with access strictly managed. The journey out across the open Atlantic swell is a commitment in itself.

The practical note worth making at the outset is that these are three separate trips, not three stops on the same route. Ireland is not a small island, and driving from Belfast to Kerry takes the best part of five hours without stops. If you are making a dedicated puffin trip to the island of Ireland, allow at least a week and plan each site as its own destination.

Rathlin Island, County Antrim, Northern Ireland

Rathlin is the only inhabited offshore island in Northern Ireland, and it sits about eight kilometres off the Antrim coast at the point where the North Channel narrows between Ireland and Scotland. On a clear day from the island’s western cliffs, the Mull of Kintyre is close enough to look like you could walk there.

Rathlin is L-shaped, about seven kilometres long, and is home to around a hundred and fifty permanent residents. There is a mix of professions, including farmers, fishermen, and a growing number of people involved in the island’s quiet tourism economy.

The ferry from Ballycastle crosses in about twenty-five minutes and is operated by Rathlin Island Ferry. From the ferry pier at Church Bay on Rathlin’s south coast, a minibus service runs to the West Lighthouse, where you will find the RSPB seabird centre and the main puffin colony. This saves a five-kilometre road walk in each direction. The minibus is worth taking; the time saved is better spent at the cliffs.

The RSPB Seabird Centre at the West Lighthouse has a viewing gallery built directly into the cliff face below the lighthouse, so you are watching the birds not from the clifftop above but from within the cliff itself, looking out across the rock faces at roughly the same height as the colony.

Puffins occupy the upper sections of the cliff, and the viewing gallery has been positioned to give direct sight lines to the main areas of activity. Razorbills and guillemots pack the lower ledges in extraordinary numbers. At peak season, the noise and movement from thousands of birds on the rock faces around you can be overwhelming.

Rathlin holds over a thousand puffin pairs in a good season, and the birds are active from late April through to late July. June is the best month when the chicks are in the burrows, and the adults return regularly with sand eels.

Rathlin pairs naturally with the Giant’s Causeway, which is about twenty minutes from Ballycastle along the coast road. The two together make a very full day from Belfast with the ferry to Rathlin in the morning, return to Ballycastle for lunch, and then drive west along the Causeway Coast to the Giant’s Causeway in the afternoon. It is a long day but an extremely good one, and the contrast between the basalt geometry of the Causeway and the seabird chaos of the Rathlin cliffs is the kind of thing the Antrim coast does especially well.

Great Saltee Island, County Wexford, Republic of Ireland

The Saltee Islands lie about five kilometres off the south coast of County Wexford, visible from the small village of Kilmore Quay on a clear day as two low shapes on the horizon, unremarkable until you know what is on them.

Great Saltee is privately owned and has been in the same family for generations. The current owner opens the island to visitors between May and July, and the boat trip from Kilmore Quay can be booked online HERE

The crossing takes about twenty minutes in calm weather and lands you on a small shingle beach on the island’s north coast. From here, a rough path leads up to the clifftop on the eastern and southern edge of the island, where the seabird colony occupies the cliff faces below and the turf above.

Puffins nest in burrows in the clifftop grass and in crevices in the upper cliff face, and they are very approachable. The island’s relatively low visitor numbers, combined with the natural tameness of cliff-colony puffins, mean that sitting quietly near a burrow entrance will bring birds within a few metres of you within minutes.

Great Saltee is less well-known than Rathlin or Skellig Michael, and that is precisely its appeal. The gannets nesting on the rock stacks off the southern tip are a sight in their own right. Guillemots, razorbills, cormorants, and shags occupy the lower ledges.

The island’s grassland interior has a cared-for, almost pastoral quality despite having no permanent residents, with wildflowers in the turf, rabbits in the burrows, and the occasional hare loping away across the grass.

The time on the island is usually two to three hours on a day trip from Kilmore Quay, which is enough to explore the cliff path and enjoy the puffin colony. June is the best month as the Saltees are at their most active in early to mid-June, and the weather along the south Wexford coast tends to be more settled than on the Atlantic-facing west.

The Hook Peninsula, about twenty minutes east of Kilmore Quay, has its own seabird cliffs and the fine Hook Lighthouse, the oldest working lighthouse in the world, making it a natural extension to a Saltees day.

Skellig Michael, County Kerry, Republic of Ireland

There are very few places in the world where the combination of wildlife, history, and landscape reaches the pitch that it does on Skellig Michael. The island rises 218 metres out of the Atlantic, twelve kilometres off the Kerry coast.

It is a twin-peaked rock of Old Red Sandstone, bare except for the Atlantic sward on its upper slopes and the extraordinary collection of dry-stone beehive huts and oratories built on a narrow shelf near the south peak by Christian monks sometime around the sixth century. The monks lived there for six hundred years. The puffins have been there considerably longer.

Puffins nest in their thousands on the upper slopes of Skellig Michael, in burrows in the turf around and among the ancient monastic buildings. By June the colony is fully established, and the experience of standing at the monastery having climbed 618 stone steps cut into the cliff face by those same monks over a thousand years ago with beehive huts rising above you, the Atlantic dropping away to the horizon below, and puffins landing, departing, and going about their business from burrows a few feet from where you stand, is something that will stay with you for a long time.

Access to Skellig Michael is strictly managed by the Office of Public Works (OPW), the Irish government body responsible for heritage sites. Licensed boats operate from Portmagee, Ballinskelligs, and Cahirciveen. The number of people allowed to land each day is limited by permit.

Landings are weather-dependent as the island has no harbour, and you must step from the boat onto a rock ledge. On rough days, no landing is possible even if conditions looked okay at departure. The boat operators are experienced and conservative in their judgement; if they say the sea is too rough, it is.

Skellig Michael slots sell out many months in advance, particularly for June, which is the most reliable month for both weather and puffin activity. To make sure you get the dates you want, start looking as soon as the dates for next year are released. If getting to the Skelligs is a priority for you, give yourself some space in your plans to allow a weather window to open up.

Little Skellig, the smaller of the two Skellig rocks, cannot be landed on at all as it is a nature reserve protecting one of the largest gannet colonies in the world, with around 30,000 pairs. While you can’t land, boat trips usually include a close circle of Little Skellig, which gives you a chance to see the sheer density of gannets on the rock.

Once on the island, the steps are steep and uneven in places. There are 618 of them with no handrails for much of the ascent. The puffins are everywhere on the upper section of the climb and around the monastery, and the temptation to stop and watch them rather than watch your footing is very real. Keep an eye on where you are putting your feet.

If the island boat trip is not for you, then you can visit the Skellig Experience on Valentia Island. This has information about the islands and the underwater world surrounding the islands. Having dived here numerous times, it is home to some of my most memorable dives with a stunning underwater landscape.

Planning your Ireland puffin trip

The three sites in this guide are spread across the full length of the island of Ireland, and visiting all three on the same trip requires real planning.

Ireland is not a large country, but the roads are slower than their British equivalents, and a drive from Belfast to Kerry takes the best part of five hours on a good day.

The practical advice is to treat each site as its own destination and build a trip that takes in one or two of them rather than attempting all three in a week.

Northern Ireland: the Antrim coast base

Rathlin Island is an easy day trip from almost anywhere on the Antrim coast. Ballycastle is 90 minutes from Belfast, and the combination of the Rathlin ferry, the RSPB seabird centre, and the return journey along the coastal A2 through Cushendun, Cushendall, and the Glens of Antrim makes for one of the finest days out in Northern Ireland.

A base in Ballycastle or Bushmills gives you the ferry on one morning, the Giant’s Causeway on another, and the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge and the rest of the Causeway Coast in between. Prices here are in GBP.

South-east Republic: County Wexford

The Saltee Islands make a natural centrepiece for a south-east Ireland trip. Kilmore Quay is well positioned for a night or two and has good food and reasonable accommodation.

The Hook Peninsula, Wexford town, and the coastal walking around the Waterford estuary all give the trip context beyond the island.

Getting to the Saltees requires flexibility as the boat trips run on calm days, so build a stay of at least two nights to give yourself a realistic chance of a good crossing. Prices here are in euros.

South-west Republic: County Kerry

Skellig Michael sits within the Ring of Kerry, and the Kerry coast has enough to justify a week’s stay regardless of whether a Skellig landing is possible.

The Iveragh Peninsula, Valentia Island, the Skelligs Experience visitor centre in Portmagee, and the wild landscape of the Beara Peninsula to the south are beautiful.

Killarney is the most practical base for a Kerry week; Portmagee and nearby villages are quieter and closer to the Skellig departure points. Book everything in advance for June, as Kerry is popular in high season and accommodation books up well ahead. Prices here are in euros.

Photographing puffins in Ireland and Northern Ireland

The three sites in this guide offer three very different photographic challenges, and all three produce images that are difficult to replicate elsewhere in the British Isles.

Rathlin Island’s West Lighthouse viewing gallery is an unusual setup for wildlife photography as you are shooting from a purpose-built platform, looking out across the cliff face at roughly the same level as the colony. This gives unusually flat, direct sight lines to the birds, and with a 200–400mm lens, the puffins on the upper ledges are at comfortable portrait range.

The razorbills and guillemots on the lower ledges are very close and offer good opportunities for tight species shots. The platform restricts movement a bit, but it also means the birds are completely undisturbed by your presence.

The Saltee Islands reward patience and a moderate telephoto. The birds at close range around the burrows are best approached with a 100–200mm lens. This is tight enough for portraits, wide enough to include habitat context.

The gannet colony on the southern stacks is a wide-angle subject; a 70–100mm lens with the Atlantic in the background gives the scale of the colony.

The low cliffs of the Saltees catch good light from mid-morning through to late afternoon, and the relatively informal nature of the visit means you can spend time in the same spot rather than moving through with a tour group.

Skellig Michael is the most challenging and the most rewarding. Tripods are not permitted on the rock as the paths are too narrow and the steps too steep. The puffins at the monastery level are usually very relaxed; a 50–135mm range covers most of what is available there.

The monastery itself, with the beehive huts, the oratories and the ancient carved stone, combines with the puffins to produce images that could not be taken anywhere else in the world. The light over the Atlantic in Kerry in June, particularly in the morning before the haze builds, is outstanding.

More puffin watching in the British Isles

Ireland and Northern Ireland together offer some of the finest and least-crowded puffin watching in Europe, but they sit within a much wider picture. In Scotland, the Orkney Islands have a network of puffin colonies spread across the archipelago. Castle o’Burrian on Westray is the largest, and the combination of Orkney’s archaeology, history, and wildlife makes it as rewarding a destination as any in this series. Shetland, further north still, offers Sumburgh Head and the extraordinary Hermaness reserve on Unst.

In Wales and the South West, Skomer Island in Pembrokeshire remains the benchmark for accessible puffin watching in southern Britain, with thousands of birds, easy boat access from Martin’s Haven, and the kind of close encounters that are usually only possible on remote northern islands.

In England, Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire and the Farne Islands both offer puffins in large numbers, with fewer concerns about the weather.