Machair is a habitat found almost nowhere else on earth — a low-lying coastal grassland formed on shell-sand, carpeted with wildflowers from May to August. The western coasts of South Uist and Benbecula have some of the finest examples. In early summer the machair is a continuous carpet of yellow, white, and purple — corn marigolds, daisies, ragged robin, purple clover — stretching from the dune edge down to the beach.
It is also critically important breeding habitat. Corncrakes, lapwings, dunlins, and redshanks all nest here; the corncrake in particular has disappeared from most of Britain but still breeds in the machairs of the Outer Hebrides. Early morning in June, you can hear them calling from the long grass. The beaches behind the machair are usually empty.