Seabird island of towering sandstone cliffs.
Handa is a Scottish Wildlife Trust reserve reached only in spring and summer, weather allowing, by a small passenger ferry from Tarbet, a few miles up the coast from Scourie, whose old fishing hotel has drawn anglers to its trout lochs for well over a century. A circular path of a few miles leads round its sandstone cliffs, where guillemots and razorbills nest on the ledges in their tens of thousands, among the largest colonies of either bird in Britain. Puffins burrow into the clifftop turf, and great skuas, known locally as bonxies, nest on the moor and will dive at anyone who strays too close. The Great Stack, a pillar of rock cut off from the cliffs by the sea, has more nesting seabirds on it, out of reach of ground predators such as foxes. Handa was resettled by crofters in 1828, but after the potato crop failed in 1846, almost everyone had left for Nova Scotia by 1848. According to island tradition, before that the islanders ran their own daily parliament, with the oldest widow on the island known as its queen. Dogs are not allowed on the reserve.
