Fewer breeding puffins at the UK’s largest colony of the species this year
June 6, 2008
Fewer puffins will be breeding on the Isle of May, the UK’s largest colony of the species, scientists report. Numbers have fallen by roughly 30 per cent - from almost 70,000 breeding pairs in 2003 to just about 41,000 pairs this year.
Mike Harris from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology has been studying and monitoring the Isle of May population for close to four decades. He tags individual birds with rings to track their progress. After decades of impressive growth, he now feels that the colony is in sharp decline.
Professor Harris’s team just completed the five-yearly count of nesting pairs that revealed the 30 per cent decline. It also found some (birds) were coming back later than scheduled and others were underweight. Professor Harris told BBC News: “A lot that we knew were alive have not turned up at all this year, so we assume they are dead, although it is possible they were aware it was going to a bad year for food, so decided not to come back at all.” Puffins spend the winter season at sea, swimming, floating and diving for food. They come to land only in the nesting period.
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