Birds in Orkney Islands
168 species listed · birdwatchers' records, 2019–2024
Our list for Orkney Islands has 168 bird species recorded regularly there: 30 residents, 60 summer visitors, 6 winter visitors, 61 passage migrants and 11 scarce visitors.
The list comes from 87,000 birdwatchers' records from 2019–2024, shared through the eBird Observation Dataset on GBIF. A bird is listed when it was recorded in at least 3 of the 6 years and has a Birdfact species guide, so more species occur here than are listed; the months show when it is recorded most years.
Birds to see in Orkney Islands in September
139 species on our list are recorded regularly this month. These are the ones birdwatchers record most often.
Common Starling
Resident
European Herring Gull
Resident
Great Black-backed Gull
Resident
Redshank
Resident
Curlew
Resident
Rock Dove
Summer visitor
Pied Wagtail
Summer visitor
Meadow Pipit
Summer visitor
Arriving in September: Redwing, Snow Bunting, Northern Pintail, Whooper Swan, European Robin, Fieldfare, Gadwall, Pink-footed Goose and 34 more.
Through the year
Species recorded regularly in Orkney Islands each month: most in September (139), fewest in January (41). Choose a month to see its birds.
All 168 birds on the list
Showing 162–168 of 168 species
Western Marsh-harrier
Circus aeruginosusLC
Regularly May
Little Gull
Hydrocoloeus minutusLC
Regularly May–Sep
White-tailed Sea-eagle
Haliaeetus albicillaLC
Marsh Warbler
Acrocephalus palustrisLC
Long-tailed Jaeger
Stercorarius longicaudusLC
American Golden-Plover
Pluvialis dominicaLC
Regularly Sep
Wryneck
Jynx torquillaLC
Frequently Asked Questions
Data: EOD – eBird Observation Dataset (Cornell Lab of Ornithology), accessed via GBIF.org, CC BY 4.0. Records from 2019–2024, aggregated and filtered by Birdfact. How these lists are made