A Day Out With The Adorable Atlantic Puffin

The Pembrokeshire coastal path traces the crinkled outline of southern Wales, weaving its way in and out of inlets and bays, along dramatic cliff tops and down into peaceful fishing harbours. From Cardigan in the north to Amroth in the south, it offers 186 miles of excellent walking.

There&rsquos nothing quite like walking in the countryside with a friend who knows about it. Steven is great. Some miscellaneous chirrup will issue from the undergrowth and he&rsquoll go &ldquoBlackcap.&rdquo A stream of song from somewhere else and he&rsquoll point out its distinctive trill &ldquoWren.&rdquo Then he apologises with a shrug, &ldquoI can&rsquot help it birder&rsquos Tourette&rsquos.&rdquo But for me and our other friends who have only recently been bitten by the birdwatching bug, his informative outbursts are only welcome. As long as we don&rsquot call those white things up there &lsquoseagulls&rsquo&mdash&ldquoThat&rsquos an absolute no-no,&rdquo says Steven, sucking in his teeth as though this is one step too far for even his generous spirit. &ldquoThey&rsquore gulls. Just gulls.&rdquo

We were here on the western edge of Wales in search of a bird that even we novices are in no danger of mistaking the puffin. The islands of Skokholm and Skomer are two of Britain&rsquos most important nesting grounds for these iconic little seabirds&mdashand at a time when every news item about wildlife tends to include the words &lsquocatastrophic&rsquo and &lsquodecline&rsquo, it is heartening to know that these colonies at least are thriving.

I&rsquod never seen a puffin&mdashcertainly not in the wild, and I don&rsquot think even in a zoo&mdashand I was fully prepared not to see one this time. As any wildlife enthusiast or birdwatcher knows, nature is wilful, skittish, fleeting and rarely, if ever, on time. I armed myself with binoculars, sandwiches and expectations set grass-cuttingly low.

We joined the queue for the boat that would take us from Martin&rsquos Haven to the larger of the two islands, Skomer, that shimmered in the distance, its clifftops thickly sprinkled with sea pinks and red campion flowers. As the boat chugged away from the landing, we squinted across the dazzling water. The air around the island thrummed with activity shearwaters, gannets, gulls and&mdashyes &ldquoA puffin&rdquo the cry went up, prompting the boat to yaw dangerously to the left as everyone craned over for a look. Then, someone spotted another&mdashthen another&mdashand more, until we were quite suddenly ploughing through puffins. They scattered out of our way like grasshoppers as you walk through a meadow. Skittering, scooting, scarpering&hellip

&ldquoSquatter,&rdquo said Steven.

&ldquoEh&rdquo I replied.

&ldquoThat&rsquos what it&rsquos called,&rdquo he said, pointing at a bird as it waggle-bottomed and frantic-paddled away from our prow. &ldquoIt&rsquos squattering.&rdquo

The 6,000 or so breeding pairs on Skomer were busy with parental duties&mdashsearching the seas for sand eels and fish to feed their young. Puffins nest in underground burrows, where the female will lay a single egg&mdashusually around late May. She and her partner take turns to incubate it for around six weeks until the chick&mdashor more correctly &lsquopuffling&rsquo&mdash emerges a little dark-grey powderpuff.

The baby birds remain in the burrow for another six weeks, being fed on a near-constant rota by their parents, until they emerge ready to fly. Many are lost to predatory gulls, but if they do make it to adulthood, they will fly off from Skomer and out to sea. Atlantic puffins disperse northwards, spending the winter far out at sea. In fact, the first two years of their life is spent entirely on the water. 

Every spring, the pairs of puffins&mdashwho mate for life&mdashreturn to their nesting grounds, even to the same burrows, having flown for months and thousands of miles on those short, stiff, unlikely looking wings. Puffins can live to the age of about 25&mdashalthough the oldest bird on Skomer is a magnificent 38 years old.

The puffin&rsquos Latin name Fratercula arctica translates as &lsquolittle brother (or friar) of the north&rsquo. With its black-and-white clerical plumage and its waddling gait, there is something vicar-ish about it. They are comical birds&mdashthe collective noun for a colony of puffins is &lsquoa circus&rsquo&mdashbut the prospects facing this iconic and much-loved creature are grim. Although the puffin numbers on Skomer and Skokholm are holding up well, those in Scotland and the north have severely declined&mdashdue, in the most part people think, to overfishing.

As we sailed through the calm blue waters around the island, and watched the little birds diving for fish and bobbing up to the surface looking faintly bemused, it was hard to think of them as endangered. It&rsquos a rare pleasure, these days, to see vast &lsquoflocks&rsquo or &lsquoshoals&rsquo or &lsquoherds&rsquo of any wild creature&mdashand to be surrounded by puffins going about their business felt like a very special privilege indeed.

It&rsquos no doubt that for modern-day visitors, the puffins are the star attraction, but there&rsquos more to Pembrokeshire than its puffins. There are grey seals and dolphins, shearwaters, guillemots and razorbills, quaint pubs, picturesque fishing harbours, sandy coves and beautiful walks. But if you find yourself pining for a city, you&rsquore in luck. There&rsquos that too.

Perched on a spit of land, as though Wales were dipping its big toe into the Irish Sea just north of Skomer across St Bride&rsquos Bay, St David&rsquos is the UK&rsquos smallest city. It boasts the unique distinction of having a cathedral big enough to house its entire population &mdasha grand 1,841 souls&mdashwith pews to spare. St David&rsquos is a delightful place with steep narrow streets winding up and down, lined with cafes, souvenir shops, and pubs, and an excellent second-hand bookstore and a shop selling home-made ice cream to die for. St David is the patron saint of Wales, who in the sixth century performed a miracle the ground where he stood to preach raised itself up to form a hill&mdashalthough, as Welsh historian John Davies notes dryly, &ldquoone can scarcely conceive of any miracle more superfluous&rdquo in this particular part of the country than the creation of a new hill.

He&rsquos right all the hills looked miraculous, bathed in summer sun and redolent with birdsong. My friends and I walked along the tops of the cliffs as the sun drew down to the water and watched the shearwaters streaking by from right to left in a seemingly unending stream, as though there were some invisible bird-highway just off the coast that they were powering along. We watched a colony of razorbills, clustered on a spur of rock pointing up from the sea as thickly as barnacles to the hull of a boat. A razorbill looks like a puffin when he&rsquos taken off his clown&rsquos costume similar size, similar blunt beak, black and white all over. Not to be confused with a guillemot&mdashwhich is like a razorbill on steroids who&rsquos taken a pencil sharpener to his beak. It&rsquos all very confusing to the non-ornithologist and a little auk-ward. But luckily, Steven was there to gently correct our mistakes&mdashand nobody, not least the birds themselves, seemed to mind one bit.

THE INFORMATION

GETTING THERE

Fly to Cardiff or Bristol from most major cities in India (return fares from approx. 40,000) and drive to Pembrokeshire. The nearest train station is Haverford West or Milford Haven.

SAFARIS There are plenty of options for wildlife safaris and boat rides in and around the islands.

• Dale Sailing Company offers trips to Skomer Island from March 30 to September 30. Boats depart at various times from Tuesday through Sunday. You can book tickets from the Lockley Lodge at Martin&rsquos Haven on the day of journey (enquiries@ pembrokeshire-islands.co.uk).
• You can also choose Island Cruises that departs from Tuesday to Sunday at 1pm. Tickets are &pound12 for adults and &pound8 for children.
• Seabird Spectacular organises two-hour guided cruises on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 7pm. Tickets are priced at &pound16 for adults and &pound10 per child. For more information visit pembrokeshire-islands.co.uk.

WHERE TO STAY

While there are several options in Pembrokeshire, there is only one place visitors can stay overnight on Skomer Island, and only for a limited time. The Old Farm, with log fires and quaint stone walls, offers a magical retreat from the mainland and unparalleled closeness to the wildlife on the island (from &pound40 per night 44-1656724100 welshwildlife.org).