To provide you with the best experience, cookies are used on this site. Learn more

You are here: Home > Our Islands > Harris > Shiants

The Shiant Isles

To the east of Harris, sitting five miles into the waters of The Minch, are the Shiant Isles, and a popular destination for day trips.

These wild and stunningly beautiful isles are one of the great bird-stations of the northern hemisphere, with some 300,000 seabirds, including puffins, guillemots, razorbills, shags and great skuas, arriving there in the summer to breed. They are one of the most important breeding colonies for seabirds with 10% of the UK's puffins and 7% of the UK's razorbills breed on these islands.

The Shiants were also home to a rare colony of black rats – believed to be the descendents of ships rats that swam ashore here after a wreck. Thankfully they were removed by the Seabird Recovery Project in recent years.

For intrepid travellers who want to stay longer on these wild isles, you can stay in the bothy and you can find out more here.

Highlights

Sea Harris

Our St.Kilda day trip is our main trip and one we specialise in. Running from Leverburgh in the Isle of Harris the trip offers the shortest crossing to this spectacular duel World Heritage site. We…

Kilda Cruises

Kilda Cruises is based in The Isle of Harris and aims to provide a fast, comfortable day trip service with St Kilda as our main destination

Immerse Hebrides Boat Tours

Scheduled boat tours, private charters and adventure sea swimming from Stornoway harbour, Isle of Lewis.

Plan your trip

Accommodation
What's On
See and Do
Food & Drink

FOLLOW OUTER HEBRIDES

Our Tourism Community

My Planner

You can build your own holiday itinerary here! Just browse our site and click this button to add to your itinerary when you see something you like. If your planner is not finished, simply click save and you can come back to it later on! You also have the option to send your itinerary to our tailor made holiday partner.