islands antrim

About 80 of the Islands in Lough Neagh are managed as part of the Lough Neagh National Nature Reserve. Populations of breeding birds are monitored every year. On the islands as a whole about 500 pairs of mallard, 300 tufted duck, 500 great crested grebes, 30,000 black-headed gulls, 150 common terns and 60 mute swans nest. Islands are essential to provide secure nesting sites for many species of wetland birds as they provide safety and seclusion from predators such as foxes, rats and mink and...

The most popular tourist spot in the island, Brown's Bay has a beautiful, safe sandy beach bounded by hills on either side. It is an ideal spot for bathing, and a popular place for picnics. A walking route for Brown's Bay takes visitors to the Rocking Stone, a prominent local landmark on the shore, and headlands which overlook the sea and the Maiden Rocks to the north. Nearby is Ferries Bay, another sandy beach location....

At the western end of Rathlin Island, sheer cliffs rise more than 100 metres above raised beaches of rounded cobbles, while towering stacks of rock stand guard just off the shore. The best time of the year to visit Kebble is the height of the breeding season for seabirds, early May to mid-July when the rough faces for the cliffs and rocky islands are crowded with thousands of breeding seabirds. Guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and fulmars raise their young on bare ledges, while puffins nest...

The view is splendid. The offshore can be inspected at close quarters by excursion boats from Portrush. The islands resound to the gruff yapping of barnacle geese....

The local boatmen will readily take visitors fishing or for trips along the coast. Sheep Island, a perpendicular stack with a flat grassy top half a mile offshore, has an enormous cormorant colony. The rats that killed off the island's colony of puffins have themselves been routed and some puffins have come back recently....

Rathlin Island lies just over six miles north of the pretty seaside resort of Ballycastle, Co Antrim, and 14 miles from the Mull of Kintyre Scotland.

The island is L-shaped; one side is four miles long, the other three, and it is nowhere more than a mile across. It is almost treeless and most of the coastline is cliffs, much of it 200 feet high.

To reach the island, take a boat from Ballycastle across Rathlin Sound to the harbour at Church Bay. The boat trip takes about...