‘Heart-breaking’ find of two dead gannets on Yell beach

A woman from Yell has described making a “very sad discovery” after she found two dead gannets tangled together on her local beach on Friday morning.

Claire Henry said it was “joost awful” and “heart-breaking” to find the birds, also known as solans, wrapped together in twine at Swarister beach in Yell.

She said that she tried to keep the beach as clean as she could, but this was the first time she had found any birds dead there.

“Dis is the first I’ve come across here. In fact there’s no many dead birds at all, but two stuck together is joost awful tae find.”

She said she had initially thought it had been one dead bird, but realised when she picked it up “it was twa tangled at da beaks we twine”.

“A very sad discovery,” she added.

She said that gannets “work off here all the time”, and it had been “a great year here for the birds”.

Some people may find the images below upsetting: