1. We calculate the yearly numbers of bird species immigrating to-and becoming extinct on-13 small islands of the British Isles, using a long and relatively complete data record. 2. We estimate the size of the colonist pool for each island using four methods. 3. We assume that immigrations and extinctions are distributed binomially, and use a maximum likelihood method to fit concave immigration and extinction functions to the data, utilizing all four species pool estimates. 4. Extinction rates increase significantly and consistently with increasing numbers of breeding species on each island. For nine of the 13 islands the extinction functions are significantly concave. 5. Immigration rates decrease consistently with increasing numbers of breeding species on each island. Seven islands have significantly concave immigration functions. 6. Immigration rates and extinction rates decline consistently, but not significantly, with island distance and island size, respectively. The number of breeding species does not always reflect the number of species likely to have reached an island. Moreover, some species may choose not to breed when their chance of extinction is high. These factors, plus the modest range of island areas and distances in our database, reduce our chances of finding the theoretically predicted effects of area and distance on extinction and immigration rates.