Fun on the Farnes Visitors sail back to bird reserve after two-year ban

The puffins started arriving two weeks ago and now there are thousands of them fizzing around in a mad frenzy. They have joined kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills, fulmars and shags. Soon Arctic terns will arrive after their epic journey across the world from the Antarctic.

- Mark Brown

This week humans arrived after a two-year ban from the Farne Islands in Northumberland, one of the UK's most important sanctuaries for breeding seabirds.

Boat visitors have been stopped from landing since July 2022 because of bird flu, which has ravaged avian populations.

Since then a more familiar sight has been National Trust rangers in hazmat suits carrying out the grim task of picking up thousands of dead birds and transporting them off the islands to be incinerated.

But a corner has been turned in the bird flu outbreak, it is hoped, leading to the decision to allow visitors back on the main island, Inner Farne, this week.

First to step off the boat was Paul Watson, originally from the northeast of England but for the last 20 years a police officer in Bermuda, which he agreed had considerably different birds and different weather to Northumberland.

"It's been a long time. It's so bleak," he said as he walked up from the jetty on a grey, bitterly cold morning.

Watson meant bleak in a good way. "It is beautiful here and it's just so nice to see so many puffins, there must be thousands of them. And no Arctic terns yet.

"It's actually nice to come early and not have your head pecked to death," he said.