Record puffin count on small Welsh island for second year running

A record number of puffins have been counted for the second year running on a small island off Pembrokeshire.

The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales (WTSWW), said 52,019 puffins were documented on Skomer Island this year - 8,000 more than in 2025.

The charity said it was a "very pleasant surprise" because it was not expecting such a high count.

Skomer is a 1.13 sq m (2.92 sq km) internationally important seabird island. It is less than a mile from the coast and its isolation means birds are protected from predators and people.

As well as a growing population of puffins, Skomer is also home to 350,000 breeding pairs of manx shearwaters and thousands of guillemots and razorbills.

The WTSWW undertakes its annual seabird count on the island to monitor the population of birds that return every spring to breed.

Leighton Newman, Skomer Island Warden for WTSWW, said: "After the tragic number of seabirds washing up on beaches across southern Europe earlier this year... it's a very pleasant surprise to see the puffin population thriving."

The Skomer team set out on a calm, clear evening with binoculars and notepad in hand to count every single puffin on land, in the sky and at sea.

The island is broken up into seven sections, and the team must work against the clock and the elements to make sure they have accounted for every puffin.

Too early in the season and the bulk of birds will not have returned, too late and they will be settled on eggs in their burrows.

The same method has been used to count the puffins since the 1980s, so they can compare more than 40 years of puffin population data.

This year 52,019 puffins were recorded, beating the previous record of 43,626 set in 2025.

Wardens, with the help of volunteers and researchers, also conduct boat-based surveys to record the number of guillemots, eazorbills, kittiwakes and fulmars breeding on the cliffs around the island.

They also monitor manx shearwaters, reptiles, marine mammals and the endemic Skomer vole.

WTSWW said long-term monitoring helps to better understand how seabird populations are changing and can sound alarm bells when something goes wrong.

Seabirds are facing a myriad of threats on land and at sea, from pollution and invasive predators to bird flu and offshore renewable development.

According to the charity, puffins are one the fastest declining family of birds across many regions.

Newman said: "Puffin numbers are declining at many sites around the UK, but Skomer bucks the trend – and it's thanks to long-term monitoring work that we know this.