Muckle Green Holm is an uninhabited
island
An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An isla ...
in the North Isles of the
Orkney
Orkney (; sco, Orkney; on, Orkneyjar; nrn, Orknøjar), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the island of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north ...
archipelago in
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to ...
. It is roughly in extent and rises to above sea level, the summit having a
triangulation pillar
A triangulation station, also known as a trigonometrical point, and sometimes informally as a trig, is a fixed surveying station, used in geodetic surveying and other surveying projects in its vicinity. The nomenclature varies regionally: they a ...
.
Name
'Muckle' is
Scots for 'big' or 'large'; 'holm' is from the
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...
''holmr'', a small and rounded islet.
Geography
To the south lies
Little Green Holm, and between the two is the Sound of Green Holms. Eastward is a strait called Fall of Warness between Muckle Green Holm and the much larger island of
Eday.
Muckle Green Holm has a
great cormorant
The great cormorant (''Phalacrocorax carbo''), known as the black shag in New Zealand and formerly also known as the great black cormorant across the Northern Hemisphere, the black cormorant in Australia, and the large cormorant in India, is a w ...
colony and a population of
European otters.
[
]
Tidal power
The Fall of Warness has strong tidal currents suitable for tidal power
Tidal power or tidal energy is harnessed by converting energy from tides into useful forms of power, mainly electricity using various methods.
Although not yet widely used, tidal energy has the potential for future electricity generation. ...
.
Starting in 2007, the European Marine Energy Centre installed tidal power testing equipment.tidal turbine
A tidal stream generator, often referred to as a tidal energy converter (TEC), is a machine that extracts energy from moving masses of water, in particular tides, although the term is often used in reference to machines designed to extract energy ...
called Orbital O2 that supplies 2MW to the electrical grid.
See also
List of Orkney islands
Notes and references
External links
Uninhabited islands of Orkney
{{Orkney-geo-stub