Part of the Sea Birds & Sea Life Exhibit
Here too, in The Skellig Experience’s is a very large natural stone re-created Skellig sea cliff, with about 50 life-size model sea birds on nesting ledges which are true to their real nesting conditions on the Skellig Islands. From time to time the sound of calling seabirds is heard from the cliff.
A view of part of the Sea Birds Exhibit
From the largest (gannet) to the smallest (storm petrel), Skellig seabirds – the hand-made models of David Mower – are resident in the Skellig Experience exhibition, living happily in a cliff environment of real rocks of the same Devonian sandstone as Skellig!
Genuine seabirds’ eggs – recovered by divers from underwater where the eggs had fallen from precarious nesting ledges – are part of the scene.
The seabirds’ amazing migratory journeys are also depicted in this exhibition: gannets to Portugal, shearwaters to South America, and storm petrels – Europe’s smallest seabirds – to the warm waters of South Africa for winter vacations!
“Stormy”, one Skellig storm petrel, so long-lived as to earn inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records, undertook this annual, return journey – 10,000km each way – for 26 years, and the well worn ring which she wore for this entire period – is in the exhibition today. “Stormy” was subsequently given a new ID as she set off to South Africa for the 27th time!
