Читать книгу Walking on Rum and the Small Isles. Rum, Eigg, Muck, Canna, Coll and Tiree онлайн

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Rum’s wild goats are subject to the same Armada myth as the ponies, but are in fact descended from domestic animals. The goat stocks were improved for stalking during the Bullough’s tenure and were renowned for their impressive horns and thick, shaggy fleeces. The tribe, numbering around 200, usually inhabits the sea cliffs and mountains, particularly in the west. A small herd of around 30 Highland cattle was introduced to the island in 1970.

Atlantic grey and common seals frequent Rum’s coastline, and Eurasian otters patrol territories around the island’s shores. Other mammals found on Rum include the pygmy shrew, pipistrelle bat, brown rat and the island’s own strain of long-tailed field mouse, Apodemus sylvaticus hamiltoni. The only reptile found on Rum is the common lizard, and the only amphibian is the palmate newt. There are brown trout, European eels and three-spined sticklebacks in the streams, and occasionally salmon in the Kinloch River.

Rum is renowned for its 61,000 pairs of Manx shearwaters – one of the world’s largest breeding colonies. These migratory birds return to Rum every summer to breed in underground burrows high in the Cuillin. Trollaval has high densities of nest burrows, which may have been occupied for many centuries. When the birds swap incubation shifts at night they make a fearsome racket, hence the Norse name for the mountain. There are sizeable colonies of fulmars, shags, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and other gulls, mainly found along the south-eastern cliffs.