Puffins battle to find enough fish

BRITAIN’S puffin population is collapsing because the birds are struggling to get enough fish, a study suggests.

Experts estimate worldwide numbers of the bird ( pictured) could fall by nearly 80 per cent in 40 years. In the hardest-hit puffin colonies off Scotland, numbers have halved in three decades.

Scientists have found they are catching fewer fish and those they do find are smaller. Their favourite, the sandeel, seems especially hard to come by.

The change in puffin diet was discovered after the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds enlisted the public to take photos of the birds feeding their young. By analysing the 1,402 photos sent in, the RSPB experts found puffins in the far north of the UK and their offspring – called pufflings – were getting less to eat.

Euan Dunn of the RSPB said: ‘All the indications are that colonies in north and western Scotland, the stronghold of UK puffindom, have been in steep decline since the last census in 2000.’