Conservationists are raising concerns for Scotland's red-listed puffins after hundreds of the birds were found dead or in poor health along the shores of Spain's Canary Islands and other mainland regions, including Galicia and Asturias.
British ornithologists have called for urgent research into the deaths, which have so far baffled scientists. Some fear changes in oceanography and climate change could be to blame, while avian influenza is also being investigated as a possible cause.
The UK is home to around 580,000 pairs of breeding puffins, with the vast majority living on a few key sites. The birds are red-listed, meaning they are in critical decline. Puffins feed mainly on sand eels, whose numbers have fallen by 48 per cent in the diets of seabirds between 1985 and 2014, coinciding with a rise in North Sea temperatures.
Up to nine dead puffins were discovered on Zurriola beach in San Sebastian last week, while the Centre for the Recovery of Wild Fauna in Tenerife confirmed as many as 140 had been found dead along its coast in recent days. Of those with leg rings, more had been ringed in Scotland than elsewhere, including three from Sule Skerry, west of Orkney, and one from Garbh Eilean in the Shiant Islands.
Dr Liz Humphreys, principal ecologist for seabirds at the British Trust for Ornithology, said: 'At this stage it’s hard to know exactly what is causing these unusual movements of birds outside their normal wintering locations and resulting in their deaths. Avian influenza caused devastating losses last year, so it’s important to rule that out. Other reasons could be storms or changes in oceanography linked to climate change, but further research is urgently needed.'
The RSPB noted that similar 'seabird wrecks' have occurred before and are often associated with bad weather, but added that birds weakened by factors like difficulty finding prey may become more vulnerable to storms.
