Shetland is famous for its rugged coastal scenery and spectacular sea cliffs, with many beautiful sheltered voes, and interesting topological features such as sea stacks and arches, spits and tombolos. The landscape is largely tree-less due to the high winds, salt spray and widespread grazing by livestock. There is a great deal of heather moorland on the hillier parts, and in the wetter areas of Mainland and Yell in particular are extensive tracts of blanket bog broken by networks of peaty lochs. The serpentine areas of Unst and Fetlar support a drier, grassy heath and on some northfacing slopes can be found the moon-like fellfield habitat.

The most obvious and colourful flowers seen as you travel around Shetland in mid summer are the red campion and meadow buttercup, with a generous sprinkling of heath spotted orchid and northern marsh orchid. In the wetter areas you find cotton grass, yellow flag, lady’s smock, ragged robin, sphagnum mosses, and the insectivorous butterwort and sundew. The delicate blue spring squill is common on the drier heaths. On the sea shore are sea pink, roseroot, sea campion, and in one or two locations the rare oyster plant. There are 22 species of endemic flowering plants in Shetland, the best known of which is the Shetland or Edmonston’s mouse-ear (Cerastium nigrescens), most easily seen at the Keen of Hamar on Unst. A number of other rare arctic-alpine plants thrive at relatively low altitude on the slopes of Ronas Hill.

Oyster Plant

The rich seas around Shetland support many breeding seabirds, notably gannet,fulmar, puffin, guillemot, razorbill, black guillemot, kittiwake, shag, arctic tern, greatskua and arctic skua. The teeming seabird colonies are probably Shetland’s biggest tourist attraction in summer, luring visitors from all over the world, and that’s easy to understand when you are sitting within arm’s length of a group of puffins. On some of the rat-free offshore islands there are colonies of European storm-petrels (most famously in the broch at Mousa), and a few Leach’s petrels, which only fly in at night. Red-throated divers also do well here, with about 700 breeding pairs nesting on the loch shores – the bulk of the British population. In the absence of ground predators such as foxes, stoats and weasels, ground-nesting birds are able to thrive and common wading birds include dunlin, redshank, snipe, golden plover, oystercatcher, curlew, ringed plover, and lapwing. There are also small populations of rarer northern species such as whimbrel and red-necked phalarope, here at the southern edge of their breeding range. Of course Shetland is renowned for its rare vagrants, and while most of these are spotted on spring and autumn migration there might still be some interesting stragglers to be seen during June.

Gannets near the Isle of Noss

Shetland’s most iconic mammal is undoubtedly the Eurasian otter, found at a higher density here than anywhere else in Europe. That doesn’t make them easy to spot necessarily, but at least they are generally active in daylight unlike those that frequent the rivers further south in Britain. Both Atlantic grey and harbour seals are common inshore, and there are occasional records of arctic species such as ringed and bearded seal, and even the odd walrus. Cetaceans are obviously a major attraction for us too, and we’ll be hoping to encounter a pod of orca close to land as they hunt for unwary seals. Otherwise, we might expect to see harbour porpoise, Risso’s dolphin, Whitebeaked dolphin, minke whale, or pilot whale – there is no organised, boat-based whale-watching around Shetland currently, so we’ll be very much pioneers here. Land mammals are few, but both brown hare and mountain hare occur on Mainland.

There are three National Nature Reserves on Shetland; at Hermaness, the Keen of Hamar, and the isle of Noss. In addition, the RSPB manages a number of nature reserves at Sumburgh Head, Loch of Spiggie, the Isle of Mousa, and the Mires of Funzie on Fetlar. Fair Isle is owned and managed by the National Trust for Scotland, and there is a famous bird observatory here. There are also 78 registered Sites of Special Scientific Interest throughout the islands.

Otter in kelp