Global warming blamed for decline of puffins

[jeffreyi]

The biggest colony of puffins in Britain has suffered a "disastrous" breeding season. the worst breeding year on record.

Thousands of puffin chicks have failed to hatch or have starved to death in the St Kilda archipelago, home to 136,000 pairs, and many of the survivors are reported to be very poor condition.


Conservationists say the current breeding year is the worst on record in one of the most important seabird breeding areas in north-west region of Europe.

(snip)

One of the wardens, Sarah Money, said: "The puffin is usually one of the more robust seabirds, finding alternative sources of food when other species struggle.

"This is a really worrying sign that something is badly wrong with the health of our seas.

"As soon as we entered the colony we could tell that something was wrong. We saw dead downy chicks scattered on the ground in front of us. Only 26 per cent of the burrows had live chicks in them and many of these were severely underweight.

"This is the worst year ever in terms of success over the time they have been studied. Previous studies have shown that the survival rates generally come in at around 71 per cent on St Kilda, with only one poor year over the study period when productivity was down to 44 per cent."

Ms Money added that the puffins had been bringing back pipefish to feed their young, because of a lack of sand eels, but the problem with this was that pipefish had "almost no nutritional value whatsoever".

(more at)

http://tinyurl.com/bdskq

Sure seems as if things are changing quickly in the higher latitudes...

[Chipper Chat]

1. Sounds bad for puffins.

Don't pelicans (or some bird) eat about half of the babies anyway?

[Boomer]

5. It's bad all over

Britain is seeing record numbers of sea bird deaths and record numbers of dead birds are washing up on California's shores.

It's not just puffins that are starving to death, it's the entire ocean ecosystem. Plankton levels are down, which means the entire food chain is collapsing.

[lady lib]

2. Sounds like they're malnourished.

"This is a really worrying sign that something is badly wrong with the health of our seas." Indeed.

[many a good man]

3. NOOOOO! Not puffins!

My favorite birds....

[driver8]

4. My mother-in-laws favorite birds, too...she is going to be heartbroken.