First sightings
The puffins were first spotted back on Burhou by the Alderney Wildlife Trust on Wednesday 18th March as the team of ecologists went to deploy Puffin Cam. There were 97 rafting, or sitting on the water, in the bay off Burhou designated as a Puffin Friendly Zone. Many of the puffins were also seen flying about in small groups, their wings a blue as they zoomed by close to the water. In 2019 the puffins were first seen back on 20th March which is why the Puffin Cams were chosen to be set-up on the 18th, before the birds began to spend much time on land.
What are the puffins up to?
For the next week or so the puffins will mostly be on the water, leaving to feed and getting ready for the breeding season after the long winter out in the Atlantic Ocean. Puffins are superbly adapted to life on the water with their large webbed feet, waterproof feathers and special glands on their beak that let them drink seawater and expel the salt. They actually spend the majority of their life at sea, only returning to land to breed.
Soon the puffins will begin to make landfall and will be seen more on the other two cameras, but for now Colony Cam is the place to be! Colony Cam can focus on the puffins on the water and pans round for daily tours of Burhou. Why not see how many puffins you can count sitting in the bay (you may need to take a screen shot for this)? So far the most we have seen was 139 on the morning of the 25th March.
Did you know…
When puffins fly they flap their wings so fast they become a blur. Their wings can beat up to 400 times in a minute when they reach their top speed of around 50mph!
We check every day and we were so excited on Friday to see so many puffins on the colony cam – such a fantastic site – thank you!
Thank you – really glad you’re enjoying the cameras. Very exciting to see them on land already, slightly earlier than last year. Should be lots more action in the coming days!
I’ve just Started to view again this week but haven’t been fortunate to see any puffins yet .
Can you tell me if there are particular times they may come & go & does the time vary when they return in the eve to the burrows .Thank you .
It’s gone very quiet at the moment, but usually on land mornings and later afternoons are a good time to watch. We will try and position the colony cam to view if they’re mainly on the water. Hopefully won’t be long before there’s more movement on the cameras!
Thanks for the great views and the effort put in. Have enjoyed watching very much.
What a contrast with the wretched RSPB who, it seems, cannot be bothered to put up a single live feed from any reserve for the benefit of their locked-down 1 million members…
Thanks Chris, really glad you’re enjoying the puffins! Always a bit touch and go whether the cameras work for time we go to set up, luckily this year they did! After all the years of doing it we’ve finally got it down
Can’t speak for the RSPB, hopefully they’ve got things in the pipeline or maybe they don’t want too much repetition of projects, but I know lots of the wildlife trusts have managed to get cameras on all sorts of wildlife http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/webcams if you’ve not seen the list already 🙂 we are hoping at some point to try and get a hedgehog camera going too – fingers crossed!
Are those Bluebells outside the puffin’s burrows, or some kind of wild heather? Burhou looks so beautiful at the moment… I can’t believe the puffins are still rafting!
Yup lots of bluebells on Burhou! It is a beautiful year, the puffins will raft all season but we are quite surprised how few are on land still
Thank you for the reply… the bluebells really are gorgeous! Perhaps the puffins have been put off by the buzzard incident… it must have impacted their community and been quite a shock.
The rabbits look like they are having a lovely time resting in the sunshine among the bluebells! Happy rabbits!
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At least they are guaranteed on land!
Yes! I’m really enjoying the live footage. Thank you so much for all your efforts getting these cameras working. Have you ever tried to include sound i.e. with a microphone attached to the camera. It would be even more amazing to hear the sea and bird calls as well… and even puffin noises when they come on land. Just a thought. Maybe you’ve tried it in years past and found it too tricky… maybe too windy?
We looked into it for this year to add a microphone as we’d really like the lovely sounds of the sea and wildlife but unfortunately didn’t find the right bits to go with it. Will look again next year!
Lovely to see lots of puffin activity this morning. Great to see from my sitting room in Suffolk.. It’s 50 years since e were in Alderney on our honeymoon. Thanks for this opportunity to travel back in lockdown. Hope the puffins will continue to come on land.
Ah thank you for the lovely comment Ann – we are so glad you are enjoying the cameras! We have seen lots of mating recently so they will be laying and appearing more and more on land – yay!
is it me or my pooter? The closeup cam pics seem too hazey to detail anything & I rarely see any activity on the main cam , are some times better than others ? I would be grateful for any pointers. despite these problems I am entranced by what I DO see ( thanks to your efforts)
Often in the morning the main and close up cameras get a bit foggy, and this takes a little longer to burn off becuase of their design. The colony camera is a dome camera so doesn’t usually have that issue!
Late afternoons are usually good, and the activity is increasing so do keep an eye from around 4pm. But they do vary. Once eggs hatch the puffins will be bringing fish back and forth all day – this will be from the end of May.
Really glad you are enjoying the cameras when the puffins do appear!
I was delighted to see puffins yesterday afternoon and evening on the colony cam. Thank-you! It made my day. I live in the Czech Republic and will probably not be able to get home to the UK for the summer at least this way I can see the sea and some wonderful wildlife. Also, great teaching ideas. Thank-you!
We are so pleased you are enjoying watching the puffins on the cameras! They are such cheerful looking birds they really do cheer you up.
Glad we could bring a little UK wildlife to you, very soon the chicks will be hatching and the puffins bringing back fish
Love the cameras, thankyou! But there seems to be far less activity this year. Seen the puffins on colony cam on the water but yet to see one on main web cam!!! Lots of rabbits tho, very cute!!!!
They do seem to have been quite back and forth this year – but when the chicks hatch in the next week or so activity will increase with hungry mouths to feed!
😁😁Seen the puffins on land this morning!!!! And the rabbits!! 😁😁
Yay brilliant! Look out for increasing activity – likely from this week as the puffling chicks catch 🐣
Huge thanks to all involved with AWT. I cannot express just how much joy watching these Puffs on a daily basis is bringing to my life ! Apart from a few moments of intense upset caused by a seagull carrying off a puffin or puffling – it has been a wonderful and interesting experience. So sad one camera is down. I was watching mainly on Colony Cam at first as this was so close to lots of activity and you were even able to see the puffins on the sea in the background – bouncing around like corks ! But this camera seems to have been moved? and is a long way away from the main activity now. So I am watching mainly on close up webcam. They are delightful little birds, and learning so much about them has been fascinating. I do hope they are very successful with breeding this year.
Thank you Cheryl – we’re so glad you’ve been enjoying the cameras and watching the puffins! Hopefully gets the highs and lots of the colony across 🙂
We are very sorry the main cam is down, it is a failure of the camera itself on island so we cannot get out to it during the breeding season, we keep disturbance on colony to an absolute minimum and it will be some weeks before our first scheduled visit.
The colony cam is a pan tilt zoom camera, which moves around on demand, and we also use it for our surveys. We have altered the normal position somewhat as the bracken has grown up a lot over the last few weeks and was obstructing the view in the default position the camera normally rests in. Jack our Ramsar Officer will take on board your comments and we can see if it’s possible to get a slightly closer view on the default position.
We hope you keep enjoying the cameras – please do keep letting us know what you’re seeing!