Hornoya

Hornøya (70.383°N x 31.150°E) is a 65 m high, 0.4 km² island in Vardø municipality in Finnmark county, Norway, about two km northeast of the town of Vardø, in the southern Barents sea region. It is a part of the Hornøya and Reinøya nature reserve established in 1983.

The bird cliff it self is on the west side of the island, where kittiwakes, razorbills, common guillemots, Brünnich’s guillemots, Atlantic puffins, and European shags breeed in the steep slopes. A few northern fulmars and black guillemots breed scattered around the island and where the landscape levels out herring gulls, great black-backed gulls, common eiders and greylag geese can be found breeding.

A seabird monitoring program was initiated in Hornøya in 1980 which was incorporated into SEATRACK in 2005 and in 2014 Hornøya became a SEATRACK location. Logger studies have been carried out on European shags as early as 2006, black-legged kittiwakes since 2008 and on both guillemot species since 2009.