Puffins return to Rathlin Island a day early

Staff Reporter

March 27 2020 06:45 AM

Rathlin Island's punctual puffins turned up a day early this year, but there was a good reason.

The return of puffins is an eagerly awaited event each spring on Northern Ireland's only inhabited offshore island. In 2017, 2018 and 2019, the first Rathlin puffins were seen on the same date, March 27. But this year, they were spotted yesterday, March 26, by island residents and RSPB Northern Ireland workers Hazel Watson and Ric Else.

As they approached the cliffs, they could see and hear that there had been a big arrival of seabirds. And there, among thousands of guillemots and razorbills, they spotted a pair of orange feet.

While the date may be one day earlier than previous years, the RSPB pointed out that this was a leap year, so it could be argued that the puffins were perfectly on schedule once again.

Belfast Telegraph

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Puffins make poor diet choices when the chips are down

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

by University of Southampton

A new study has shown that Britain's puffins may struggle to adapt to changes in their North Sea feeding grounds and researchers are calling for better use of marine protection areas (MPAs) to help protect the country's best known seabirds. Britain's coasts support globally important populations of many species of seabird, but they face many challenges as their established habitats change.

Scientists at the University of Southampton and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology studied the diet and distribution of Atlantic puffins and razorbills on the Isle of May National Nature Reserve, off the coast of southeast Scotland.

They studied the seabirds' over-winter feeding habits and found that during the 2014 to 2015 winter, when conditions were good, both species foraged close to their breeding colony eating a diet consisting mostly of lipid-rich fish such as sandeels. However in the 2007 to 2008 winter, conditions were not as good and the small fish populations were mainly concentrated further out in the southern North Sea. Whilst the razorbills flew farther away from the breeding colony in order to maintain their healthy diet, the puffins stayed closer in, eating a poorer quality diet of crustacea, polychaete worms and snake pipefish. The researchers found that fewer birds survived to return to the colony in the spring of 2008 compared to 2015, with puffins being more severely affected than razorbills.

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Puffins being hunted and brought back to the UK despite Government efforts to save the species

Helena Horton

27 JULY 2019 • 4:00PM

Puffins are being hunted 100 at a time by trophy collectors who are allowed to bring the carcasses back to the UK, despite the government’s efforts to save the species.

Campaigners and MPs are calling on Theresa Villiers, the new environment secretary, to ban the import of puffin trophies and push the international wildlife trade body to give the charismatic bird stronger protection.

Websites offer grisly hunting trips for around £3,000, offering British people the chance to go to Iceland and kill a “bag” of puffins. The hunters boast of being able to shoot up to one hundred at a time.

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How puffins catch food outside the breeding season

JULY 10, 2019

by University of Liverpool

Little is known about how seabirds catch their food outside the breeding season but using modern technology, researchers at the University of Liverpool and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology have gained new insight into their feeding habits.

Seabirds, including puffins, are often elusive and spend much of their lives at sea, feeding exclusively there. The period outside of the summer breeding season is particularly mysterious as the birds spend their time far away from land.

Using depth recorders, researchers compared the feeding behaviour of puffins with two closely related species, guillemots and razorbills, to find out how deep and how long they dive for during the non-breeding period.

They also fitted loggers to seabirds breeding on the Isle of May National Nature Reserve in south-east Scotland. These birds were then recaptured the following breeding season, when they returned to land again after months away at sea.

Puffins are excellent divers and, in a similar way to penguins, use their wings to "fly" underwater to catch their prey.

Yet the study found that despite this great diving ability, both common guillemots and razorbills can dive for even deeper and longer than puffins can and continue to do so outside the breeding season.

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‘Suspicious’ activity caught on puffin webcam

Chris Cope

19 June 2019 09:33

CONCERNS have been raised after people were seen on a webcam apparently interfering with puffin burrows at Sumburgh Head late on Monday night.

Viewers of the popular ‘puffin cam’ appeared to see a couple of people with torches climb over the wall at the Sumburgh lighthouse towards the nesting birds.

A third person was also seemingly captured on camera staying put behind the wall.

Voices could be heard on the webcam footage as the individuals were just metres away from audio recording equipment.

The incident happened at around 11pm.

The RSPB is aware of the footage, while local police are keen to hear from anyone with information about the identity of the people and their intentions.

Officers also reminded people that tampering with birds can be an offence.

All wild birds in Great Britain are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act.

Andy Steven, who runs the Shetland Webcams website, said he watched the incident live and checked with the RSPB to see if there was anything “official” happening.

“The activity did look planned and suspicious with three people involved,” he said.

“They did not appear to realise they were being streamed live and they were tampering with the puffin burrows just a few metres from our sound recording head, so their voices were captured too.”

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Audubon intervenes to protect ocean monument for puffins

JUNE 15, 2019

by Patrick Whittle

The National Audubon Society is getting involved in a lawsuit over the future of a national monument in the ocean off New England because of the area's importance to seabirds, especially colorfully beaked puffins.

Fishing groups sued in federal court against creation of Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which former President Barack Obama designated in 2016. The case is on appeal. Court documents show Audubon has moved to file a friend-of-the-court brief in favour of keeping the monument.

Lawyers for the fishing groups have said the monument was illegally created by Obama using the Antiquities Act. The groups include fishermen, such as lobstermen and crabbers who contend the creation of the monument has created an unfair hardship for them because it restricts where they can fish.

But the nearly 5,000-square-mile area is especially important to Maine's vulnerable Atlantic puffins, said Karen Hyun, vice president of coasts for Audubon. Protecting the monument area from commercial fishing will help provide the birds with a reliable food source, she said.

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Birdwatchers urged to join the ‘puffarazzi’: Photos of puffins needed to help threatened seabird

15 May 2019 at 12:00am

A three mile stretch of chalk cliffs on the Yorkshire coast is one of the most valuable habitats for a variety of seabirds.

But there is one bird above all that people come to see: the puffin.

Bempton Cliffs near Bridlington is one of just 30 known breeding sites for this bird which is classed as vulnerable to extinction.

The cliffs are some of the most popular for birdwatching in the whole of Britain and in the summer months, up to 1,000 people will flock to the site every single day.

Conservationists now want those eyes to join the “puffarazzi” and photograph puffins with fish in their bills to help find out how their diet is changing as a result of global warming.

They want to know what the seabirds are feeding their young.

The citizen science scheme was first run by the RSPB in 2017, with 602 people sending in 1,402 photos of the seabirds from almost 40 colonies.

The pictures have helped scientists identify areas where puffins are struggling to find the large nutritious fish which they need to feed their chicks, or pufflings, the RSPB said.

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How Puffin Island's bird population is fighting back from effects of invasion of shipwreck's four-legged stowaways 200 years ago

The colony was ravaged when the ship went down in 1816, and the island's puffin population has never fully recovered

Tom Molloy

19:00, 11 SEP 2018

UPDATED19:51, 11 SEP 2018

The bird population of Puffin Island has spent 200 years trying to recover from a shipwreck that brought unwelcome stowaways to its shores.

At the peak, more than 50,000 puffins resided on the island, just off the east coast of Anglesey.

But a shipwreck in the 1800s plagued it with brown rats. Their number exploded, and the consequences for the puffins were catastrophic.

To this day, the puffins that give the island its name have never got back up to their previous strength. But work is going on to try to reverse the damage.

An estimated 500,000 rodents were on the island by 1971, virtually wiping out the thriving sea bird population, cutting the number down to around 2000 by 1907, and leaving less than 20 pairs of puffins by the 1990s.

By 1998 the situation got so bad that the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) stepped in to eradicate the vermin.

Despite the intervention, according to Puffin Island Seabird Research, there were only eight breeding pairs of puffins left on the island in 2010.

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Eerie silence falls on Shetland cliffs that once echoed to seabirds’ cries

Climate change has caused a catastrophic drop in the numbers of terns, kittiwakes and puffins

Robin McKieScience Editor

Sun 3 Jun 2018 06.59 BST

Sumburgh Head lies at the southern tip of mainland Shetland. This dramatic 100-metre-high rocky spur, crowned with a lighthouse built by Robert Louis Stevenson’s grandfather, has a reputation for being one of the biggest and most accessible seabird colonies in Britain.

Thousands of puffins, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and fulmars gather there every spring to breed, covering almost every square inch of rock or grass with teeming, screeching birds and their young.

Or at least they used to – for this year Sumburgh Head is a quiet and largely deserted place. Where seabirds once swooped and cried in their thousands, only a handful of birds wheel round the cliffs. The silence is uncanny – the result of a crash in seabird numbers that has been in progress for several years but which has now reached an unprecedented, catastrophic low.

One of the nation’s most important conservation centres has been denuded of its wildlife, a victim – according to scientists – of climate change, which has disrupted food chains in the North Sea and North Atlantic and left many seabirds without a source of sustenance. The result has been an apocalyptic drop in numbers of Arctic terns, kittiwakes and many other birds.

“In the past, Sumburgh Head was brimming with birds, and the air was thick with the smell of guano. The place was covered with colonies of puffins, kittiwakes, fulmars, and guillemots,” said Helen Moncrieff, manager of RSPB Scotland’s office in Shetland.

 “There were thousands and thousands of birds and visitors were guaranteed a sight of puffins. Today they have to be very patient. At the same time, guillemots have halved in numbers. It is utterly tragic.”

This grim description is backed by figures that reveal the staggering decreases in seabird numbers in Shetland, the most northerly part of the British Isles. In 2000, there were more than 33,000 puffins on the island in early spring. That figure dropped to 570 last year and there are no signs of any recovery this year, although it is still early in the season.

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Puffins found to have hidden fluorescent beaks that may help them attract the opposite sex

The previously unknown patterns are only revealed to human vision under UV light

Josh Gabbatiss Science Correspondent 

Puffins have been found to have fluorescent beaks that glow under UV light. 

Scientists have long suspected that the well-known seabirds’ colourful bills are a form of display, perhaps involved in attracting the opposite sex.

But Jamie Dunning, an ornithologist affiliated with the University of Nottingham, always suspected there may be more to their beaks than immediately met the eye.

Birds like puffins possess the ability to see not only the red, blue and green light humans can see, but also wavelengths at the UV end of the spectrum.

This means they can see UV “colours” in objects humans cannot. Those colours can only be revealed to us by placing the objects under UV light.

In other species this knowledge has led scientists to discover patterns and colours in feathers that are not visible to humans.

“With a puffin’s bill you don’t have to look at it very long to see that there’s hundreds of thousands of years of sexual selection there,” Mr Dunning told The Independent.

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First steps taken to tackle Puffin decline

29/11/2017

Project Puffin, a new RSPB initiative, has taken the first steps in explaining why some British Puffin colonies in are in dramatic decline. Scientists analysed more than 1,400 photos sent in by the public, helping them to build a better picture of what these seabirds are feeding their chicks

Britain’s coastlines come alive each spring with the sight, sound and smell of Puffins nesting and raising their young, known as ‘pufflings’. With their bright orange bills and distinctive eye markings, Puffins are hugely popular with birders and the general public alike, and hot-spots in Britain and Ireland attract visitors from all over the world to photograph these bustling colonies. However, in recent years the species’ numbers have plummeted in some areas, and experts estimate that without help more than half the global Puffin population will disappear within the next 40 years.

This summer RSPB scientists set out to understand more about the differing fortunes of Puffins around our coasts. They launched Project Puffin, which aimed to provide a snapshot of what the birds are feeding their young at as many colonies as possible, as it is thought that the food supply has been negatively impacted by warming seas and shifting ocean currents. By enlisting the help of the public, 1,402 photos of Puffins bringing food to their chicks were sent to the team.

From May to August, 602 people supplied 1,402 photos of Puffins taking food to their chicks. Pictures came from almost 40 colonies around Britain, including those on the Farne Islands, Skomer and the Isle of May. The project is supported by Heritage Lottery Fund Scotland thanks to money raised by National Lottery players. To see more photos and to learn about the RSPB’s Project Puffin, visit www.rspb.org.uk/projectpuffin.

Source

Beaked baby boomers: Record year for puffin chicks in Maine

By: PATRICK WHITTLE, Associated Press

Updated: Nov 27, 2017 - 4:02 PM

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Puffins face existential challenges, but the little birds found a new role in Maine this summer: baby boomers.

The 2017 nesting season was the most productive on record for a group of vulnerable Maine puffins, scientists with the Audubon Society said. The Atlantic puffins are small seabirds with an awkward walk and colorful beaks that are popular with eco-tourists.

The birds are at the southern edge of their breeding range in Maine, and the Eastern Egg Rock colony in Muscongus Bay is the subject of much study. Audubon reported that the colony increased from 150 to 172 pairs during this year's nesting season.

That is the highest single-year increase since puffins recolonized the little island in 1981, said Steve Kress, a biologist and vice president for bird conservation with Audubon.

"It was an excellent year," Kress said. "There's a reason to be happy, and a reason to be concerned because there still is a long-term trend toward warming waters."

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‘Puffarazzi' clue to decline in puffins

28 November 2017

Photographs of puffins taken by wildlife enthusiasts have provided a clue to why numbers of the birds in Britain and Ireland have been falling.

RSPB Scotland said images showing what the birds were feeding chicks suggested that puffins in the Northern Isles were catching less nutritious prey.

The colonies in Orkney and Shetland have suffered some of the most serious declines in numbers.

The photos were taken by 602 people, dubbed "Puffarazi" by the charity.

An appeal yielded 1,402 images of puffins, 517 of which were of birds at sites in Scotland.

Traditionally, puffins feed on a mixture of fish, with nutritious sandeels making up a high proportion of their diet.

Early results suggest that the diet of puffins varies significantly around the UK and Ireland, said RSPB Scotland.

In Orkney and Shetland, puffins appeared to be consistently finding smaller prey compared to most other colonies.

Read on  

These astounding puffin pictures are telling scientists something very important about the effect of climate change

22 September 2017

A puffin photograph is great addition to any wildlife photographer’s portfolio.

The temperature of the sea is rising and the sand eels that the puffins feed on don’t like the warmer sea temperatures. The puffins are finding it harder and harder to find them.

But the right shot also has a scientific value.

Throughout the summer of 2017, members of the public have been sending the RSPB thousands of photographs of puffins feeding in locations from as far south as the Channel Islands to Unst in the north of the Shetland Isles.

They show that diets vary significantly across the UK.

A lack of food means that puffin numbers have dropped to around 50-60% of what they were 25 years ago.

Richard Humpage of the RSPB told Landward that this was due to climate change.

Continued   andsee photos: 

Puffin alert! RSPB warns of extinction risk to Scotland’s cutest seabird

11th April 2017 by Susan Smith 

The puffin and the curlew have been moved onto the conservation red list in the latest report into the state of birds in the UK

Scotland's iconic puffin is at risk of global extinction and the much loved curlew is now the most pressing bird conservation priority in the UK, according to a new report.

More than one quarter of UK birds are in need of urgent conservation effort according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) latest State of UK birds report. 

The report found that more than a quarter of the UK’s regularly-occurring bird species, including many whose strongholds are in Scotland, are now what conservationists refer to as red-listed.

Read more at

Puffins that stay close to their partner during migration have more chicks

Female winter foraging is also critical to puffin pair breeding success

 

Date: April 7, 2017

Source: University of Oxford

Puffin pairs that follow similar migration routes breed more successfully the following season, a new Oxford University study has found.

Many long-lived birds, such as swans, albatrosses or indeed, puffins, are known for their long-lived monogamous, 'soulmate' pairings. Scientists have long understood that in these species, reproductive performance is influenced by pair bond strength and longevity, with long-established pairs usually better at rearing offspring. However, in species like puffins which have to migrate to distant wintering grounds during the non-breeding season, very little is known about how mates maintain their pair-bond and behave. Do they keep in contact to maintain their relationship? Or do they go their own way and abandon their mate until the following spring?

The new study which features in the April 7th 2017 edition of Marine Ecology Progress Series, focused on whether puffin pairs stayed in contact during the winter months or instead headed off and migrated independently, prioritising their individual health and wellbeing, and whether this had any effect on the pairs' subsequent breeding success.

Over the course of six years, the team from Oxford's Department of Zoology, in collaboration with the London Institute of Zoology, used miniature tracking devices called geolocators to track the migratory movements and behaviour of 12 pairs of Atlantic Puffins, breeding on Skomer Island, Pembrokeshire. They assessed if and how much pairs' migratory strategies were related to their future breeding performance and fitness.

Read on

Heritage Lottery Fund award to help save Puffins

An RSPB Scotland project to aid conservation efforts for puffins has been awarded £49,800 by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

 

Puffins are one our most recognisable and much loved seabirds with their colourful bills and eye markings. However, in recent years their numbers across the UK and Europe have plummeted leading to the species being declared vulnerable to global extinction, with further declines of between 50-79 percent estimated by 2065 (1). Warming seas, caused by climate change, affecting puffins’ food sources are thought to be one of the main threats to their numbers. 

Now thanks to this HLF grant an innovative project to help these threatened seabirds will take place this year. Project Puffin (UK) combines the latest technology with citizen science to tackle three of the biggest challenges hampering conservation efforts for these charismatic birds; discovering more about what puffins feed their chicks, where they go to find food and how their numbers are changing. 

As over 80 percent of the British and Irish population of puffins is found in Scotland much of the project’s work will focus here. Counts will take place at a number of puffin colonies, many of which have seen an alarming reduction in size. The counts are urgently required to accurately measure the extent of this decline and assess how puffins are currently faring. 

GPS trackers will be carefully fitted to puffins at two sites in Scotland. During the summer these 31 tags will provide information on where parent puffins go to fish to feed their chick. This will then be combined to generate maps of their offshore feeding areas during the tracking, and also detail what conditions they need to feed. 

Further information on the diet of puffins will be gathered through the citizen science aspect of the project taking place while puffins are feeding their chicks during June and July. Visitors to puffin colonies across the UK and Ireland are asked to take photographs of the birds with fish in their bills. The project will provide clear guidelines for this to ensure puffins, which are very sensitive to human presence around their burrows, and other wildlife are not disturbed, and so that the photographs provide the most useful data possible. An online portal will be set up to submit the photographs to; these will build a picture of what the chicks are being fed. 

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