Everyone’s favourite seabird

Richard Collins wonders if puffins are becoming extinct or just migrating north.

ACCORDING to a BBC report, there has been a sharp decline in the number of puffins nesting on the Farne Islands off Northumberland. There used to be up to 56,000 pairs nesting in this famous colony but now there are only 37,000. Ornithologists are worried; the usual suspects, global warming over-fishing and pollutants are in the dock but nobody can say, for certain, what is going on.

The puffin, sometimes called the ‘sea parrot’, is everyone’s favourite seabird; it even has a range of children’s books called after it. The cartoonist’s dream bird is a cross between a penguin and a chicken with a ridiculous multi-coloured bill and bright red legs. Its inquisitive disposition adds to the bird’s charm; puffins fly past humans who visit their colonies and stand around gazing at the intruders. They come ashore only to breed, spending the rest of the year at sea. The small wings act as fins underwater, making puffins poor flyers. However, they still manage to travel huge distances. In winter, rafts of puffins can be found from the fringes of the Arctic pack-ice to the Canary Islands and across the ocean to North America.