成人快手

Just 2 miles off the Northumberland coast, the numerous Farne Islands, viewed from the mainland resemble a dark pod of whales in the glistening North Sea. For Living World this week, Paul Evans is on a quest to learn more about one of our favourite seabirds, the puffin. Catching an early boat, he arrives on Inner Farne to all the sounds and smells of a seabird colony at the height of the breeding season. Here he is met by David Steele, a warden on these islands for 11 years.

To begin their adventure, they must head towards the Pele tower, which means that David and Paul have to negotiate the dive bombing attacks of another breeding bird on the island, the Arctic tern. Avoiding razor sharp bills is not for the faint hearted, the terns though are just protecting their eggs and chicks which are all around Paul's feet as he walks.

Scrambling to the top of the Pele tower this allows not only a respite from the bombarding terns but a panoramic view of the island beyond the adult puffins relaxing on the edge of the tower. Paul encounters a wandering puffin in the courtyard allowing an opportunistic, if painful, close up encounter with this charismatic member of the auk family. But where do these birds breed? David leads us over to the grassy slopes near the sea cliffs where, with his arm all the way down a burrow, he searches for the single downy chick. Blinking in the summer sun, this chick has never seen daylight before. But in just a few short weeks on a dark night, it will leave the safety of its burrow for ever. With no assistance from its parents, it will scramble across the island and swim off into the great unknown of the North Sea for three solitary years, before returning once more to land to breed as an adult.