Long-term beached bird survey data from Orkney and Shetland were examined for abnormal mortality patterns of Atlantic Puffins Fratercula arctica that coincided with decreased breeding numbers at colonies in eastern Britain. Unusually high numbers of dead Atlantic Puffins were found in the late winters of 2002/03 and 2003/04, autumn and early winter 2006, and autumn 2007, although not necessarily in both island groups at the same time. The 2007 mortality was unusual in that some adult birds were replacing their primaries.

After breeding, Atlantic Puffins Fratercula arctica disperse widely at sea and are rarely seen from land until the following spring. Ringing data suggest that birds from colonies in the north and west of Britain mainly move into Atlantic waters, whereas those breeding in eastern Scotland and northeast England mainly remain in the North Sea and the Skagerrak (Harris 2002). Oil pollution, environmental factors such severe weather and/or food shortage, drowning in fishing nets, and hunting, in descending order of frequency, are the reported causes of death for ringed birds found dead outside the breeding season, although given the species’ pelagic habits there will be biases in the relative importance of these mortality factors, and in the geographic distribution of recoveries (Harris 2002).

Little is known of the winter ecology of the Atlantic Puffin (hereafter ‘Puffin’), but studies of individually marked birds show that winter survival of adults is generally high (90% or greater), although it can vary markedly between years, and less dramatically but significantly over longer periods (Harris et al. 1997; Breton et al. 2005; Harris et al. 2005). Counts of burrows at the two largest colonies in the North Sea, the Isle of May, Firth of Forth and the Farne Islands in 2008, indicated a drop of c. 30% since 2003, and further counts in 2009 confirmed the decline on the Isle of May and found similar declines at two nearby colonies (Harris et al. 2009; Steel 2009). Return rates of colour-ringed adult Puffins to the Isle of May were also low in 2007 and 2008, suggesting an increase in adult mortality in the previous winters (Harris et al. 2009), while spring counts on Fair Isle, Shetland were 46% lower in 2009 than in 2001 (Shaw et al. 2009). Here we examine beached bird survey (BBS) data from Orkney and Shetland, the only long-term monthly BBS schemes in the UK, for any recent changes in the number of Puffins found dead, particularly outside the breeding season.

We are indebted to the many participants in the Orkney and Shetland BBS over the past 30 years. Sabine Schmitt kindly extracted Puffin data for 2002–2007 from the RSPB national BBS database. We also thank Mike Harris and Andy Webb for their constructive comments on the manuscript.

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