Introducing Project Puffin

Guest blog by Georgia Longmoor, Project Puffin intern, RSPB Centre for Conservation Science

I’m very excited to be part of the Project Puffin team this year! One of my roles in the project is keep you updated on our puffin research, so you’ll hear a lot more from me over the next few months. This is my first blog post of the season, where I want to tell you about our goals for Project Puffin and a bit about what we’ve been up to so far.

Puffins facing severe declines
Puffins are an iconic British Bird – we all know and love them. Unfortunately their numbers are decreasing throughout Europe – it’s estimated that there will be over 50% fewer puffins by 2065, which is a scary prospect. They have even recently been listed as vulnerable to global extinction on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of endangered species.

Photo: A puffin at the RSPB Sumburgh Head reserve. Photo by Georgia Longmoor

Thanks to a grant from Heritage Lottery Fund Scotland, Project Puffin aims to improve our understanding of why puffin numbers are declining so much, and give us a chance to change the future for one of the most well-known birds in our country. We’ll be investigating how puffin numbers are changing, where puffins go to feed and what puffins are feeding their chicks. 

Puffin census
We’re tackling this problem from all angles. At the moment we’re carrying out a census to figure out how many puffins there are at key breeding sites in the Shetland Islands. We’ll then compare these numbers to counts of puffins carried out in earlier years, to find out how their numbers are changing.

Puffin tracking
We also want to find out where puffins are travelling to get food. If we know where their important feeding areas are, we can find out whether there are problems contributing to puffin declines and make steps to solve them. We’ll be tracking puffin movements using GPS tracking tags in two Scottish colonies – Hermaness in Shetland and the Shiants in the Outer Hebrides. Sophie and Fritha will be the key tracking interns, and Chris will be working on developing new GPS tags which are more ‘puffin-friendly’ than traditional tags.

Puffarazzi - Using citizen science photography to understand what puffins feed their chicks
Finally, we want to understand what food British puffins need to raise their new born chicks successfully – a lack of the right food in the right places could be another reason why we’re seeing fewer puffins across Europe. We’ll be relying on you to get involved and help us with this research by sending us photos of puffins with food in their bills from around the UK! Check our website www.rspb.org.uk/projectpuffin to find out more.

Photo: some of the Project Puffin team at North Kessock, Inverness. From the left: Georgia, Chris, Sophie, Fritha, Rob, Ellie and Oli. Ready to start our first aid and rope access training! Photo by Rob Hughes

The team
Our team is made up of six interns: myself, Sophie Elliott, Oliver Prince, Fritha West, Chris Cachia Zammit and Sian Haddon. We’re working alongside Rob Hughes (the senior research assistant) and Dr Ellie Owen (conservation scientist and the brains behind this project!), and we’re being supported by a team of media, communications and technical experts based in the RSPB Scotland Headquarters in Edinburgh and the RSPB’s UK Headquarters in The Lodge in Sandy, Bedfordshire.

Safety first – preparing for a puffin census on Shetland

An important part of our training was learning how to work safely near clifftop seabird colonies. This included how to carry out emergency first aid (including CPR and responding to a wide range of injuries in the field), and how to safely access seabird cliffs using ropes. We travelled to a clifftop near Inverness (Loch Duntelchaig) to practise tying knots, working as a team to set up anchors, and finally using our ropes to walk safely towards the cliff edge. This was great preparation for our upcoming trips to the Shetland Islands and Outer Hebrides, where our team will be carrying out census and GPS tracking puffins.

After a successful first week, we packed up our equipment and set off for our overnight ferry trip to the Shetland Islands - our first puffin census location! As we drove into the ferry, I wondered what to expect from our first trip to the Shetland Islands. We were all excited, nervous and preparing for the Project Puffin adventure - and of course, we were ready to see a puffin, some of us for the very first time!

Keep an eye out for further blogs from the team over the summer as the project progresses. 

To find out more and follow our Project Puffin journey, keep checking our website www.rspb.org.uk/projectpuffin, and if you’re on Twitter follow our hashtag #ProjectPuffinUK.

Video: Dr Ellie Owen introducing Project Puffin