Tommy Noddy

Today we had an away day to the Farne Islands. The weather was fabulous and the birdlife was stunning - thousands of guillemots, razor-bills, shags, terns and, of course, puffins, which are called Tommy Noddys locally.

The cold wet spring has been tough on the birds, firstly by flooding many nests and burrows and secondly by being too cold for the sand eel population to migrate to within feeding distance. Consequently they have been mainly feeding on grass eels (like in this photo) which are a lot smaller than sand eels making it a lot harder work to get a good meals worth. Fortunately, the sand eels are moving within range now though and we certainly saw quite a few coming back with beaks full.

More photos from the day can be seen here.