![]() Hansen, a gifted cook, roasted a leg of lamb for dinner with garlic and thyme, and he brought along a couple of bottles of excellent single-malt whiskey, one of his non-avian fascinations.Īfter dinner, the two scientists worked into the bright Arctic night, ultimately catching, examining and releasing a dozen birds in their two-day stay on this island. There were also counterbalancing pleasures Dr. Fayet wears contact lenses, and the grit was a torment. On Grimsey, a northern island that pokes above the Arctic Circle, gulls and arctic terns swirled in the cloudy sky and the wind at the cliffs blew at 40 miles per hour or more as Dr. Hunters use nets to catch the birds on Lundey Island. Hansen encountered jovial hunters who had killed hundreds of the birds and were carrying them toward their boats to be sold to restaurants that mainly serve the meat to curious tourists. Since 2010, he also has conducted a census, a twice-yearly “puffin rally” in which he travels more than 3,100 miles around Iceland, visiting some 700 marked burrows in 12 colonies, counting eggs and chicks.ĭuring a recent stop at Lundey Island, Iceland, Dr. Fayet, a junior research fellow at the University of Oxford who is from France, on her project to monitor the activities of four puffin colonies, two in Iceland and others in Wales and Norway. Iceland has restricted the annual harvest, but hunting “is accelerating the decline,” Dr. Hunters with long nets can be seen tooling around Grimsey Island in the summer, leaving behind piles of bird carcasses, the breast meat stripped away. “The puffin is the most common bird in Iceland,” said Erpur Snaer Hansen, acting director of the South Iceland Nature Research Center. The birds are cherished by Icelanders as part of their history, culture and tourist trade - and, for some, their cuisine. Since 2015, the birds have been listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, meaning they face a high risk of extinction in the wild. Though some puffin colonies are prospering, in Iceland, where the largest population of Atlantic puffins is found, their numbers have dropped from roughly seven million individuals to about 5.4 million. ![]() Ideally, this bird, with its tuxedo-like black-and-white plumage and clownish orange beak, would have voided its bowels into a stainless steel bowl she calls the “puffin toilet.” She took a flat wooden spoon out of its wrapper, scraped the mess up and placed it in a vial for analysis she wants to know what these birds have been eating.Ī puffin colony on the coast of Borgarfjardarhofn, Iceland. As she brought the croaking seabird into the light, it defecated copiously on her pants, which were, thanks to her long experience with birds, waterproof. She gently drew a puffin out, having snagged its leg with a thick wire she had curved into a shepherd’s crook. And the fact that puffins are tasty, and thus hunted as game here, hardly helps.Īnnette Fayet is trying to solve the mystery of the dwindling Atlantic puffins, and that is why she was reaching shoulder deep into a burrow here last month. Scientists say that climate change is another underlying factor that is diminishing food supplies and is likely to become more important over time. The potential culprits are many: fickle prey, overfishing, pollution. ![]() The birds have been in precipitous decline, especially since the 2000s, both in Iceland and across many of their Atlantic habitats. ![]() GRIMSEY ISLAND, Iceland - Puffins are in trouble. ![]()
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