14-05-2025
The way to get the measure of puffins — pop them in a jug
Elegant is not the first adjective one reaches for to describe the stubby, loveable puffin. Even so, there is something particularly undignified about the poor creature being placed headfirst into a plastic measuring jug.
The birds on the Farne Islands, off the Northumberland coast, are not being subjected to a cruel prank, however, but being weighed as part of the National Trust's annual puffin count.
The archipelago, an internationally important sanctuary for about 200,000 seabirds that come to the same spot each year to breed, has been under the conservation charity's care for exactly a century.
In that time, rangers have worked out the best way to handle the puffins who, after long winters spent rafting on open seas, return to their burrows each spring
