A bit about Burray

I have lived on Burray since August 2012 and slowly finding my way around. From a bird watching point of view it has many habitats to attract the birds and I hope to cover these on this page to give you a flavour of what you might see about the island.

To start with I thought I would say a bit about Burray in general.

Burray is one of the many islands that together form Orkney and these islands lie to the North of the Scottish mainland across the Pentland Firth from John O'Groats.

One of Orkney's most well known features is Scapa Flow, home to the Royal Navy in both World Wars as it provided a sheltered harbour for the fleet to gather before heading out on operations.

Burray sits on the East Side of Scapa Flow between East Mainland and South Ronaldsay. It sits between Churchill Barrier 3 and Barrier 4.

The island is approximately 3.5 square miles (9 square kilometres) in area and the highest point of the island is 80M ASL. Burray has a population of around 500.

The village of Burray sits on the Southern shore of the island just to the West of Barrier 4. The main road running across the island splits it into two which I will refer to as East and West Burray.

On the East side there is a long sandy beach called the Bu and where the road gets closest to Scapa Flow there is a fresh water loch called Echna Loch and on the other side of the road is Echnaloch Bay.

Just to the West of Burray linked by a small causeway is the island of Hunda.