Shared description
Scares Islands
‘Scar - Big and Little, 2 rocks, in entrance to Luce Bay, Wigtownshire’.
The Scares or the Scare Rocks are rocky islets in Luce Bay off the coast of Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland although the pronunciation of the rocks varies according to which side of Luce Bay you were born on, I’ve heard Scares, Scars and Scarries. I am reliably informed however that the correct way to pronounce this group of rocks is 'Scar Rocks' with a silent 'e'.
Made up of the Little and Big Scares, the largest unsurprisingly is Big Scare which is 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) south west of Port William and a similar distance east of the Mull of Galloway. There is a small outlying rock to the west of Big Scare Link and three companion islets called the Little Scares are about 1 km to the north east. Link
The schooner Annie McLester was wrecked on Big Scare at an unknown date in the 19th century. On 27 January 1849 the 400 ton barque Archibald of Memel, was wrecked on the Little Scares. In September 1860 a small round-sterned four-oared boat, was picked up near to Big Scare. The parent vessel had presumably been lost in the vicinity although no record of this is known.
There is an MOD firing range in the area with brightly coloured floating targets deployed. The southern limit is marked by a yellow buoy 1.75 nmi SSE of The Scares and the buoys DZ1 to DZ6 mark the boundary of the range.
The islands are part of Luce Bay and Sands SAC and are leased to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. They have been described as an "inaccessible bird reserve" and provide nesting sites for more than 2,000 pairs of breeding Northern Gannets, hundreds of Guillemots and smaller numbers of Shags and Kittiwakes. Grey seals can also be seen around both groups of rocks. Depending on the light, the rocks can appear to take the form of a grey or white structure courtesy of sea bird guano.
The only way to get to the Scares is by boat and I am indebted to Murray and the Port William Lifeboat PIRSAC Link who allowed me to join them for a training exercise on Luce Bay which took in a visit to the Scares and a landing on Big Scare to inspect the bird population particularly the Gannet and Guillemot breeding sites.
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