Continuing Trouble with Sea Birds

'Serious concern' over seabirds

The poor breeding of Scotland's seabirds is giving cause for "serious concern", according to RSPB Scotland.

Early reports from coastal reserves indicate continuing problems for the internationally important populations of guillemots, kittiwakes and others.

Nests have been abandoned, with cliffs which "should be teeming" now empty.

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Mystery of tumbling puffin population

Numbers of puffins at England's largest colony, on the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast, have mysteriously tumbled by a third in the past five years.

Breeding pairs of the small seabirds have decreased on the National Trust-owned islands from 55,674 in 2003 to 36,500 this year.

Results of the count, which was carried out by the team of nine National Trust wardens across eight of the islands, came as a shock. All eight islands showed a decrease in population, with four showing a dramatic decrease of up to 50 per cent.

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Hundreds of Mysterious Juvenile Penguin Deaths in Brazil

The discovery of hundreds of young penguins washing up on the Brazilian shoreline in the past month has sparked a scientific mystery over what may have led the birds thousands of miles astray.

The so-called Magellanic penguins began appearing in late June. Many of them dead or barely alive, they arrived on beaches all over southeastern Brazil, about 2,500 miles from their native southern Patagonia.

Although the penguins regularly migrate to southern Brazil in search of food, the sheer quantity of penguins washing up farther away than normal has prompted worries that human activity may be throwing off the animals' migratory cycle.

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Just another day around the oceans of the world...