Called the “clown of the sea” for its colorful beak and comical waddle, the Puffin is a widely beloved and well-known seabird. It can be found nesting in burrows across the Scottish coast, including on the Isle of May, Fidra, Craigleith, Orkney, Shetland and St Kilda, which holds the largest colony. Puffins are small, about the height of your average ruler, with a black back, white cheeks and undersides, bright orange legs, and a distinctive, triangular beak that becomes brighter during breeding season.
Puffins spend most of their lives at sea, only coming ashore for a few months to breed in late spring and summer. They are incredible divers, using their wings to “fly” underwater to depths of up to 60 metres to catch small fish like herring, hake, sandeels, and capelin. Their beaks are specially adapted to carry dozens of slippery fish at a time.
However, their numbers have sadly plummeted and they are now threatened with global extinction. Puffins are on the Scottish Biodiversity List, which identifies the species that are of the most importance to biodiversity in Scotland. It is also on the UK Birds of Conservation Concern Red List.
Chick survival can be greatly affected by food supply, particularly of sandeel. These small fish have declined in Scotland due to warming sea temperatures and commercial fishing. Nesting in burrows on the ground makes puffins particularly vulnerable to mammalian predators that are not naturally present on the remote islands where they breed.
Photos: Ben Andrews, Les Carter, John Bowler and Holly Paget-Brown for rspb-images.com
Action Needed
- Urgently tackle the Nature and Climate Crisis.
- Deliver priority actions of the Scottish Seabird Conservation Action Plan related to biosecurity measures, such as island eradications to restore lost breeding colonies, and keep all existing breeding sites predator free.
- Ensure that important areas for Puffin and the species they rely on for feeding (sandeels) are effectively managed by consulting on fisheries management measures for inshore MPAs, ensuring that all marine stakeholders are fully involved, and implementing the results of the consultation.
- Develop offshore wind in harmony with nature by applying the mitigation hierarchy and implementing strong ecological safeguards for strategic compensation. The proposed windfarm at Berwick Bank is so damaging that it cannot be compensated for, and should not go ahead.
- Secure funding for research and monitoring.
Threats
- Invasive non-native predators at breeding sites, which eat their eggs or chicks
- Offshore wind developments sited in inappropriate locations, which can either kill Puffins directly or cause them to have much longer journeys in search of food
- Climate change leading to warmer seas, which affects the quantity and quality of prey species, such as sandeels
- Lack of suitable prey, which can be due to a variety of factors, such as overfishing, habitat loss from inappropriate development, and climate change.
MSP Nature Champion
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