Muckle Skerry is the largest of the Pentland Skerries that lie off the north coast of Scotland. It is home to the Pentland Skerries Lighthouse.

Geography

Muckle Skerry lies in the Pentland Firth at. It is the westernmost of the skerries. At 1 km long and rising to an elevation of 20 m above sea level, it is sizable enough to be considered an island. However, the notoriously bad weather of the firth has historically rendered Muckle Skerry uninhabitable and as such it is more often thought of as a skerry.

Important Bird Area

The skerry is part of the Pentland Firth Islands Important Bird Area (IBA), so designated by BirdLife International because it supports significant breeding populations of seabirds.

Pentland Skerries Lighthouse

Pentland Skerries Lighthouse was constructed in 1794 by the Commissioners of the Northern Lights. The engineers were Thomas Smith and his stepson Robert Stevenson (this was the first light that Stevenson officially worked on).