If you want to see puffins in the UK, then arguably the best place to go is the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast. The group of rocky islands are home to around 100,000 pairs of seabirds including gulls, terns, ducks, and auks, as well as a colony of grey seals.
Despite the challenging terrain, people have been living on the islands for centuries. Monks, hermits, lighthouse keepers, soldiers and shipwrecked sailors have all made them their home. St Cuthbert, the bishop of Lindisfarne, and who gave his name to the common eider, spent over 10 years living an austere life as a hermit on Inner Farne and is buried on Lindisfarne.
Grace Darling who became a national heroine after risking her life to help stranded survivors of the wrecked steamship Forfarshire in 1838, lived with her father in Longstone Lighthouse, one of two lighthouses that are still in use on the islands today.
Today the islands are owned by the National Trust and the only permanent human residents are the charity’s rangers who reside there for 10 months of the year to look after the wildlife. And part of their work involves carrying out a puffin census.
Until 2018, the census was undertaken every 5 years. But due to concerns about climate change and over-fishing having an adverse effect on the puffins’ main food source, sand eels, the census is now an annual count.
Puffins have historically done well on the Farne Islands due to an abundance of food, a lack of ground predators, and plenty of suitable nest sites in the cliffs and crevices found on the islands.
They are members of the auk family alongside razorbills and guillemots, colonies of which can also be found on the Farne Islands. There are about half a million puffins in the UK, which is about 10% of the global population.
They are one of our favourite birds, with their brightly coloured bills giving them the nickname ‘sea parrot’, although locally in Northumberland they are known as a ‘Tomnoddy’ which is another word for a fool or a dunce.
On land the puffin can appear clumsy and awkward but at sea its short wings become flippers and it can propel itself through the water at astonishing speeds and to great depths. It is an excellent fisher, fishing by sight and swallowing smaller fish while staying submerged for up to a minute. It brings larger fish to the surface, often a few at a time, which it grips tightly in the serrated edges of its beak.
The Farne Island puffins return to the islands each year to breed between April and late July and spend the rest of the year out at sea. While they are on the water, they shed the horny coverings on the bill which makes it appear less broad and more pointed. At the same time the face becomes darker, and the eye ornaments are shed. The winter plumage is seldom seen by humans as they do not return to land until the next breeding season by which time the familiar stripey blue and orange bills have grown back again.
Puffins mate for life and raise just one chick, known as a puffling, per season. They nest in rabbit-like burrows, and incubate the single egg for about 40 days. The puffling, which is covered in charcoal-covered down, stays in the burrow and is fed by both its parents, before it is ready to see the world 40 days later, waddling out of the nest chamber, and to the water’s edge where it will learn to fish, and spend most of its life.
Sand eels, its primary food source, are several species of slender fish with a pointed snout, that can grow up to 30 cm in length, and are often found swimming in vast shoals. They are highly nutritious and the preferred prey for many other species of fish, seals, whales, dolphins, and seabirds.
However, rising temperatures are having an adverse effect on the quality of plankton on which sand eels feed. Temperature variations can also have an impact on sand eels’ metabolism which affects their reproductive success and increases their mortality rate. This means they have been forced further north to find colder waters.
Their high nutritious value means sand eels are also commercially important in the production of fish meal used to feed farm animals, but over-fishing in the North Sea coupled with the effects of climate change means that the Farne Island puffins are having to travel further to find rich feeding grounds, which makes them more vulnerable to the increasing frequency of winter storms.
To count the puffins on the Farne Islands, the rangers check whether the numerous nesting burrows are occupied or not. They look for signs of puffin footprints, droppings, egg shells, fish, or feathers near the entrance, fresh digging, and will sometimes reach inside a burrow to feel for an adult, chick, or egg inside, a technique called grubbing.
Using a method called stratified random sampling on 4 of the larger islands of the 8 used by the puffins for breeding, they superimpose a 25 m2 grid and randomly select 30-50 squares. They then place a bamboo cane in the centre of each square and use a piece of rope to from a circular quadrant. Within each quadrant they count each burrow and determine whether it is occupied or not. From the samples they will extrapolate the numbers to calculate the total for the whole island.
Switching to an annual survey means the National Trust can get year-on-year data which allows it to monitor the puffin breeding population much more closely and get a better picture by tracking numbers against the likely causes of changes in the population.
In 2018, the puffin count revealed that puffin numbers were currently stable and had increased by 9% since 2013 from 39,962 to 43,956 pairs of birds. However, the population is well down from its peak of 2003, when 55,674 pairs were recorded.
The following year, it was feared that the population would be adversely affected after heavy rainfall flooded many burrows on the islands, but a total of 43,752 pairs were counted, just 0.5% down on the previous year.
Although the full results for 2020 are not yet known, the National Trust are interested to find out how the lack of visitors to the Farne Islands, due to Covid-19 has affected the puffins’ breeding success. The puffin survey was carried out in a limited format last year, but anecdotally it would appear that it was another positive year for puffins, and the absence of visitors meant they were able to nest in new parts of the island such as the picnic spots on Inner Farne.
After being closed for 18 months, the Farne Islands are due to open to visitors from Monday. The National Trust team is looking forward to welcoming people back and their return will be closely monitored to assess the impact during breeding season, as the birds, seals, and other wildlife get used to sharing their environment with humans again.
