Thursday, July 08, 2010

Slight increase in Puffin numbers

It was good to hear that Puffin numbers have increased on the Farne Islands this year. Ok a five percent increase after a 30 percent fall still means a long way to go but its a start.

Puffins have also been fitted with GPS loggers to enable researchers to see where the birds go to fish.

Results show that the birds are travelling 20 miles from the islands, they were previously thought to head anything up to 60 miles away. Puffins were thought to dive up to 25 metres but now they are only going down an average of 4-5 metres.

The team of researchers from Newcastle University also fitted the tiny geolocator tags to the leg rings of eight puffins during 2009.

However so faronly two have been recovered and they are waiting for the data to be extracted from the devices.

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