THE NATIONAL PARKS and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has said that there is evidence to suggest that puffins have left Skellig Michael early this year, but they don’t know why.
The island, which is 12km off the coast of Co Kerry, is a Special Protection Area (SPA) for birds and every year around April, thousands of puffins return there to breed.
The NPWS have been monitoring the puffin population on the island and at other seabird colonies around the coast since the early 1990s.
In a statement, it said that puffins are known to leave the island each year in late July and early August.
“While there is some evidence to suggest that the puffins left the island a few days earlier than in previous years, we do not yet know why this has occurred, nor does it suggest any major change in the behaviour pattern of the population on this island or at other colonies.”
It added that there is no record of bird flu affecting the puffin population in Ireland.
Results from the NPWS’s latest survey data from May this year shows a count of puffins “favourable with previous counts since NPWS started monitoring puffin on the island”, it said.
Speaking to The Journal, head of communications at Birdwatch Ireland Niall Hatch said the puffins departing early is not something to be concerned about.
“It’s only marginally early. You would expect puffins to leave around the first week of August, so maybe it’s a couple of days early, but not alarming, so I don’t think there’s any particular cause for concern from that fact alone,” he said.
Hatch said that puffins spend the summer months feeding their chicks – or pufflings – until they have grown before flying the next in early August.
“The chick then is in the nest getting hungry and hungrier and after a period of time, it realises that mum and dad aren’t coming back to feed it anymore and it heads off to sea by itself and then it’s on own and has to catch its own fish.”
After leaving Ireland, the birds head towards Newfoundland in Canada to feed off the coasts before moving out towards the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, where they spend most of the year bobbing and diving to catch fish.
Hatch said the birds will return to the breeding colony around May next year.
The size of the population of puffins on Skellig Michael is not known, although research is being conducted by the NPWS to track a number of the species.
Hatch said that puffins are a hard bird to monitor during the nesting season because unlike most other seabirds, who nest on open ground or on clifftops, they nest in burrows under the ground.
“Puffins are a hard bird to monitor during the nesting season because unlike most other seabirds, they nest in burrows under the ground,” Hatch said.
He said the population could be assessed through seeing what level of birds return next year, but even then it’s difficult because puffins can live for 30 years or more, and when they become adults, they don’t look any different.
“A one-year-old puffin looks the same as a 30 year old puffin, you can’t really tell us what age they are. Even if you’re seeing lots of adult puffins around, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re doing well reproductively, that chicks are surviving.”
Hatch said that there has been an “almost complete collapse of breeding” in some areas of Iceland, which is home to the biggest puffin colonies in the world, and Norway.
However, this is not being driven by bird flu, but by the lack of food availability, he explained.
“Climate change is affecting the distribution of plankton in the ocean. Plankton likes cold water because there’s more oxygen in it. As temperatures warm, plankton moves to more northern reaches, the small fish that feed on that plankton follow it and those fish in turn are the food for the puffins.
“Where the adults might be able to still feed, it takes the fish out of range of the nesting colonies. They’re too far away from the breeding colonies for the adults to go out, get more food and then fly back to their chicks.”
There is currently no figures on whether bird flu is impacting puffin populations in Ireland, but Hatch said it could potentially be a threat to them.
“We know that bird flu has been hitting other seabirds very hard, but puffins because of their nesting in burrows and being more isolated from each other, it might not be as bad for them, but we don’t know.”
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