{"id":544879,"date":"2026-04-22T15:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T15:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/544879\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T15:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T15:51:10","slug":"record-skomer-island-puffin-count-for-second-year-running","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/544879\/","title":{"rendered":"Record Skomer Island puffin count for second year running"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The WTSWW undertakes its annual seabird count on the island to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cdexjz58e3zo\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">monitor the population of birds<\/a> that return every spring to breed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Leighton Newman, Skomer Island Warden for WTSWW, said: &#8220;After the tragic number of seabirds washing up on beaches across southern Europe earlier this year&#8230; it&#8217;s a very pleasant surprise to see the puffin population thriving.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Skomer team set out on a calm, clear evening with binoculars and notepad in hand to count every single puffin on land, in the sky and at sea.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The island is broken up into seven sections, and the team must work against the clock and the elements to make sure they have accounted for every puffin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Too early in the season and the bulk of birds will not have returned, too late and they will be settled on eggs in their burrows.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The same method has been used to count the puffins since the 1980s, so they can compare more than 40 years of puffin population data.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This year 52,019 puffins were recorded, beating the previous record of 43,626 set in 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wardens, with the help of volunteers and researchers, also conduct boat-based surveys to record the number of guillemots, eazorbills, kittiwakes and fulmars breeding on the cliffs around the island. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They also monitor manx shearwaters, reptiles, marine mammals and the endemic Skomer vole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WTSWW undertakes its annual seabird count on the island to monitor the population of birds that return&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-544879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}