remote Icelandic community fights to save puffin chicks.
Every year, residents of Heimaey, an island off the coast of Iceland, form puffin patrols to rescue chicks, known as pufflings.
Kolbrun Sol Ingolfsdottir, one of the residents of the town, told the PA news agency that she has been going on puffin patrols since she was a little girl.
“I’ve been on puffin patrols since I was maybe five years old,” she said.
“And it’s so much fun going with my own kids now.”
However, she said the puffin population has declined in recent years.
“When I was a little girl, we found maybe 40-50 pufflings in an hour,” she said.
“That was really nice, (then) there were a lot of puffins, but it’s been slowly declining for a few years now.”
The Sea Life Trust Puffin Rescue Center rehabilitates and cleans injured or oiled pufflings at the rescue center in Heimaey.
Audrey Padgett, the center’s general manager, said: “Over the past two years we have seen more than 7,000 baby birds rescued and released each year.
“And last year we helped release about 31 of those who had been smeared or injured.”
She added that they had seen worrying conditions this year.
She said: “However, this year we are seeing some very worrying conditions on this island in particular.
“We see that only about 35% of the burrows have chicks, and a very low nesting rate.
“So the scientists who study them are trying to figure out what might be going on. Does it change the ocean temperature, food availability, bird flu, anything like that that can affect these birds?
“And so it’s more important than ever that we help those baby pufflings get into the sea that we can.”