Fair Isle Bird Observatory

Stay at the world famous Bird Observatory, with its warm comfortable accommodation, friendly welcome, good home cooking and family atmosphere.  Enjoy the spectacular cliff and coastal scenery, wild flowers, dramatic seabird colonies and a wealth of spring and autumn migrants.

Fair Isle is Britain's most remote inhabited island, situated 25 miles south of Shetland and 25 miles north of Orkney.

Fair Isle, 3.5 miles long by 1.5 miles wide, is Britain's most isolated inhabited island. It can be divided geographically into two parts: the higher moorland areas and cliffs in the north, with the flatter, more sheltered and fertile land in the south. All crofting land is in the south, where sheep (farmed for meat and wool) are the mainstay of most crofts, supplemented in some cases by chickens and cows. Crops grown are severely limited by environmental conditions - soil and climate - and are dominated by oats, turnips and potatoes.

More exotic vegetables and flowers are grown under glass. Hay is cut by traditional methods on most crofts - silage is preferred on one or two - but in general, the degree of mechanisation on the island crofts is still limited. Hill sheep are farmed in a co-operative system, with all the sheep being rounded up in summer (for shearing) and autumn (for division of lambs). Although rich, the seas around Fair Isle are rough, restricting the number of fishing trips. Most fish caught is for consumption on the island, although crabs and lobsters caught during the summer, are sold to customers on mainland Shetland.