Qualla: Farne Islands

Farne Islands: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pontificalibus, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 28 May 1979, a tern with a black cap and grey wings appeared on Inner Farne. Birdwatchers identified it as an Aleutian tern - a species that breeds on rocky islets in the North Pacific and winters off the Philippines. It had no business being in the North Sea. It stayed for two days, was photographed and identified beyond doubt, and then vanished. It remains the only Aleutian tern ever recorded anywhere in Europe. The Farnes are like that. They are small islands, only about twenty of them depending on the tide, mostly bare rock, and yet they have been collecting unlikely visitors - saints, birds, divers, naturalists - for thirteen centuries.

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Image: Pontificalibus | CC BY-SA 3.0

Farne Islands: Cuthbert's Hermitage

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James T M Towill, CC BY-SA 2.0. The earliest recorded inhabitants of the Farnes were Culdees - the wandering Celtic Christian hermits of the seventh century. In 651, Saint Aidan came here from Lindisfarne. In 676, Saint Cuthbert moved out from Lindisfarne to Inner Farne to live as a hermit, in a small stone cel...

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Image: James T M Towill | CC BY-SA 2.0

Farne Islands: A Spine of Dolerite

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit mattbuck (category), CC BY-SA 4.0. Geologically, the Farnes are the eroded edge of a great igneous intrusion called the Whin Sill, a sheet of resistant dolerite that runs underground across northern England and surfaces in spectacular places - Hadrian's Wall, High Cup Nick, Bamburgh Castle's rock, and here. Once t...

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Image: mattbuck (category) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Farne Islands: The Wildlife Census

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. The 2021 count records 36,211 pairs of puffins, 59,168 individual guillemots, 4,772 pairs of kittiwakes, 882 pairs of Arctic terns, 417 pairs of common eider, and dozens of other species. Summer visitors to Inner Farne are warned to wear hats - Arctic terns dive-bomb anything pas...

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Image: Nigel Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0

Farne Islands: Lighthouses and Wrecks

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mick Knapton at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Farnes have killed ships for as long as ships have sailed past them. The first lighthouse was built on Inner Farne in 1673 but never lit. Captain John Blackett established working coal-burning beacons in 1778, replaced by Trinity House with the current Farne Lighthouse in 181...

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Image: Mick Knapton at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0