Skip to content
The UK Bird Atlas

Mediterranean Shearwater (Puffinus yelkouan)Where and when to see it in the UK

Status not yet classified · reporting peaks August · Petrels, Shearwaters, and Diving Petrels · BOU category A

Records to 2026-08-16 · build 2026-08-31

Mediterranean Shearwater (Puffinus yelkouan)
Julien Renoult, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Peak months
Mediterranean Shearwater: relative reporting rate by 10 km square, September

Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (grid squares, place names from OS Open Names). Northern Ireland place names: OSNI Open Data, OGL v3.0. County and country boundaries: Office for National Statistics, Open Government Licence v3.0. Coastline: Natural Earth. Bird records from the data partners listed here.

Mediterranean Shearwater has been recorded in 198 of the 2,971 10 km squares covering UK land (7%) in records to 2026. Its strongest squares are in England, Wales and Scotland. Reporting peaks in August.

Conservation status: Not Evaluated (IUCN Red List, NE)
View on the IUCN Red List
Relative to this species' best squares (how classes are calculated)
Very high
19% or more of visits
High
5% to 19%
Moderate
1% to 5%
Low
under 1%
Surveyed, not recorded
at least 20 qualifying visits, no record
Insufficient records
too few visits to say
Lighter fill
Few visits, lower confidence
Small dot
Occasional: a single record, or out of season

Seasonality

Reporting rate by month, relative to the peak month
MonthRelative to peakShare of visitsTypical class
January 0%<1%Low
February 0%<1%Low
March 0%<1%Low
April 1%<1%Low
May 1%<1%Low
June 4%<1%Low
July 30%<1%Low
August 100%<1%Very high
September 84%<1%High
October 37%<1%Low
November 4%<1%Low
December 0%<1%Very high

Squares with the highest reporting rate in August

SquareWhereShare of visitsClass
SD33Lancashire, England100%Very high
SH13Gwynedd, Wales100%Very high
SH23Gwynedd, Wales100%Very high
SH49Isle of Anglesey, Wales100%Very high
SH50Gwynedd, Wales100%Very high
SJ18Flintshire, Wales100%Very high
SJ39Liverpool, England100%Very high
SM72Pembrokeshire, Wales100%Very high
SN59Gwynedd, Wales100%Very high
SS87Bridgend, Wales100%Very high

Spotted an error in a square? Report it and it goes into the review queue. Read the methodology for how classes, flags and sensitive-species rules work. Data to 2026.