Puffins, Fulmars, Guillemots, Dartford Warblers, Peregines and many others are regular residents. Alderney is famous for its seabirds, especially the gannets, about 7,000 pairs nest on the Channel Islands’ two gannetries, Ortac and Les Etacs (Garden Rocks), totalling approximately 2% of the world population. Arguably Les Estac is the most easily viewed colony in Europe.

Alderney is a magnet for birdwatchers and is the third largest, and the most northerly, of the British Channel Islands. One of the features which makes Alderney so interesting for birdwatchers is the wide variety of habitats that occur within the confines of such a small island.

There are cliffs and offshore stacks, rocky shorelines, sandy beaches, marine heathland, open fields and farmland, wooded valleys, gardens and small stretches of inland water. These very different habitats provide home or refuge for over 270 different bird species from our common residents and regular summer and winter visitors to rare passage migrants.

The island's proximity to France means that species found on mainland Europe but not in Britain, are sometimes seen here. The Island is famous for its seabirds, especially the gannets. About 7,000 pairs nest on the Channel Island's two gannetries, Ortac and Les Etacs.

The United Nations Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, otherwise known as the Ramsar Convention, officially recognised Alderney’s west coast and Burhou Island as a wetland of worldwide importance on Thursday 25 August 2005. The designated Ramsar site extends to 1,500 hectares, some 600 hectares more than mainland Alderney and includes all the waters from the island’s west coast out to the northern gannet colony of Ortac, Burhou, the islets and reefs that surround it and includes Les Etacs.