Scilly July 2026

I have just returned from a little over two weeks in Scilly on my usual family summer trip to the islands. Over the past couple of years, I have been lucky to visit a few times during spring and autumn, when migration generally makes for much more exciting birding than in the middle of summer. Despite this, the trip ended up producing the highest number of bird species I have ever recorded during a summer visit to Scilly, including 6 species added to my Scilly list (which was a real surprise).

The first three days of my trip 13th – 16th July were spent on Bryher with my parents, and I enjoyed having the chance to bird the island thoroughly over this time. Bryher is very small, only around 1.5 miles long and 0.5 miles at its widest, meaning it is possible to explore pretty much every corner in detail. After three days of putting quite a bit of time into covering the island each day, it felt unlikely that there could have been many species present that I had managed to ‘miss’. In fact, a lot of the good habitat for birds is in an even smaller corner on the west side of Bryher, which is where I spent the bulk of the three days birding. Over this time, I recorded a few shorebird species on Stinking Porth, including Oystercatcher, Whimbrel, Common Sandpiper, Dunlin, Greenshank, Redshank and Common Ringed Plover (including once instance of a young Common Ringed Plover being taken by gulls).

As well as Stinking Porth, I was regularly visiting the fields adjacent to Popplestone Bay (famous for being the site where a Blackburnian Warbler was found in 2022, only the fourth ever recorded in Britain but the first to be widely twitchable). In this area, I had an adult Cuckoo. This was rather late for adults to still be in the UK, I imagine a lingerer from the mainland rather than one that bred in Scilly.

Adult Cuckoo

Additionally, on a day where I spent much time taking photographs of the hundreds of Barn Swallow feeding recently-fledged young, I had a Tree Pipit flight-calling overhead. This was my first Scilly tick of the trip and, likely an early autumn migrant already beginning its journey south, was one of those birds I was very lucky to pick up simply through spending so much time birding such a small area. It was over in a matter of seconds and could very easily have gone completely unnoticed were I not in the right place at the right time.

​Popplestone fields were also excellent for other small passerines that were either recently fledged or adults feeding young, with a smattering of Stonechat, Goldfinch, Great Tit, Blackcap, Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler. I also enjoyed trying to get a better sense of the butterfly diversity across this part of the island, while improving my identification of butterflies, moths and other insects more generally. Red Admirals were particularly numerous, perhaps unsurprisingly for such a strongly migratory species, with butterflies moving north from continental Europe and North Africa into Britain through the spring and summer, before later generations make the return journey south again in autumn.

After the three days on Bryher, I had recorded 38 bird species and was moving to Tresco for two more weeks in Scilly. Upon arriving and walking around the island, it was striking to see just how much Storm Goretti from earlier in the year had impacted the wild spaces on the island, with many of the iconic 200-year old Scot’s Pines now missing. I had an excellent start to the first full day on Tresco with a trip to the Swarovski hide on Tresco’s Great Pool. I was surprised by not one but three Scilly ticks: a Lapwing, Ruff and Little Grebe. None of these had really been on my radar as a potential Scilly tick during a mid-July trip, with Lapwing being a bird associated more with autumn and winter on the islands, and Ruff predominantly a passage migrant whose numbers build later in the summer. The Ruff appeared to be a male moulting out of its breeding plumage, likely already on its southward migration after breeding. This makes sense given it remained for just one more day before presumably continuing on its journey, while the Lapwing was more content on Tresco and would remain on the island for the entirety of my two-week stay.

​Around Great Pool, there were also very good numbers of Willow Warbler and Reed Warbler. This was the case for my entire holiday in Scilly, and a lot of my time birding was spent taking photos of these birds as I hoped for a rarer warbler to crop up!

Elsewhere on my first day, I had five Pochard on Abbey Pool, including three young(ish) birds. Pochard are only sporadic breeders on Scilly, making it particularly nice to see evidence of another successful breeding attempt on Tresco. The island does appear to be something of a Scillonian stronghold for the species, however, with broods recorded on the Great and Abbey Pools in a number of recent years.
 
I then walked along the south beaches, which is one of my absolute favourite birding spots to spend some time at. It was actually quiet on the wader-front during this day’s visit, though there were very good numbers of Great Black-backed Gull (78), Black-headed Gull (51) and Mediterranean Gull (32). The latter is particularly interesting, as Med Gulls were once a genuinely scarcity on the islands: as recently as 2006, a count of just seven represented the highest ever recorded on Scilly. The day was then rounded off well with a Hobby that drifted over Tresco in the late afternoon.

​On 20th July, I spent the day on St Marys before going on the Scilly Pelagics trip in the evening. I was lucky that on this day a juvenile Wood Sandpiper was found at Standing Stones Field, which I was a five minute walk away from due to being at the hide in Lower Moors. It was a very obliging bird, and was a great addition to my Scilly list. Beyond this, I had good numbers of Reed Warbler around Porth Hellick and Higher Moors, as well as a Sedge Warbler and Cetti’s Warbler. Walking back towards Hugh Town, I also had a juvenile but independent Cuckoo near Giants Castle.

The pelagic trip took us right into The Atlantic 3.5 miles south-west of Bishops Rock Lighthouse, which itself is over 4 miles from the nearest inhabited island. On this trip, I had 1 Puffin, 2 Razorbill, 1 Guillemot, 2 Common Tern, 8 Wilson’s Storm Petrel (total for others on the trip was 12), 20 European Storm Petrel, 4 Fulmar, 1 Great Shearwater, 250 Manx Shearwater and 60 Gannet. As usual, this was an excellent trip which I highly recommend to any birder (so long as they can deal with the choppy conditions for five hours!).

​Over the next couple of days on Tresco, I normally spent a similar structure to the day of checking both the pools and walking along the south beaches. Across this time, I was fairly regularly seeing the aforementioned wading species (with a high count of 11 Greenshank) in addition to 2-3 Green Sandpiper and a single Snipe. On a non-avian front, I also was regularly seeing Red-veined Darter, Black-tailed Skimmer, Blue Emperor and Clouded Yellow Butterfly.

​There were also opportunities for birding beyond Tresco, and one of the highlights of the trip came unexpectedly. We were on a family boat trip in our small 16ft motor boat when we came across a family group of 6 Shelduck (a breeding pair with 4 young ducklings) on the sea just east of Samson. We kept our distance, but this isn’t a species I’ve seen in Scilly at this time of year! Although Shelduck do occasionally breed on the islands, successful breeding appears to be fairly irregular, so it was great to find evidence of a successful breeding attempt in Scilly in 2026.

Shelduck pair with ducklings

​On 22nd July I finally had a very fruitful day along the south beaches on Tresco, with 55 Oystercatcher, 12 Common Ringed Plover, 7 Whimbrel, 14 Turnstone, 122 Sanderling, 7 Rock Pipit and good numbers of gull species (including a single Common Gull, which is surprisingly scarce in Scilly, and in the evening a juvenile Yellow-legged Gull). Also, just beyond the sand banks, I had a flock of 22 Greenfinch, not notable for any particular reason other than that I have not seen as large a flock as this in Scilly before!

​On 24th July, we took a guided wildlife boat trip around the Eastern Isles and the south side of St Marys and St Agnes. Here, we were treated to a few Common Dolphins and many Atlantic Grey Seals, for which Scilly is a particularly important stronghold, supporting more than 60% of all pups born annually in south-west England. Additionally, I had my first Black-legged Kittiwake of the trip.

​There was a noticeable change in the weather on 25th July. The previous 12 days had been remarkably warm and mostly clear, with winds generally coming from the east at first before settling into a prolonged northerly to north-easterly airflow. On the 25th, however, the wind swung round to the northwest and strengthened slightly. This change appeared to bring more pelagic seabirds within sight of land, and a 30-minute seawatch from the north end of Tresco produced 1 Sooty Shearwater and around 450 Manx Shearwaters, the majority moving west.
 
Over the remaining days, the weather cleared up again. The morning of the 27th July brought with it an adult Water Rail at Great Pool on Tresco, on the 28th I was treated to another Hobby hunting over Tresco, and the 29th saw a Knot on the south beaches of Tresco.

On my final day, we headed to St Marys in the morning to walk around the island a little before our Scillonian III sailing back to Penzance (the last time I will ever sail on this boat before the Scillonian IV starts sailing next year!). I was lucky to have a very vocal Crossbill near Carreg Dhu Gardens on St Marys (a late and final Scilly tick), and the crossing back to the mainland was reasonably quiet, with 60 Manx Shearwater and 100 Gannet.
 
As mentioned at the beginning, with a total of 86 bird species, this became my most fruitful trip to Scilly during the summer months, and it was great to add six species to my Scilly list, taking it now to 166 species. The full eBird trip report can be found here.