For the first time since 2019, rangers on the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast, cared for by the National Trust, are gearing up to carry out a full puffin census, surveying eight of the 28 islands to get a vitally needed and critically overdue picture of the red-listed seabird’s numbers.

Counts in recent years have been adapted and carried out amid severe disruptions, firstly due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021 - which resulted in the islands having to close with rangers limited to working as and when restrictions allowed – and subsequently due to outbreaks of avian influenza in 2022 and 2023.

As a result, this year’s full count will be pivotal for obtaining a complete picture of how the quirky seabirds are faring, with limited sample surveys across only two to four islands over the last four years, indicating the average number of breeding pairs as under 40,000 compared to nearly 44,000 back in 2019.