How will Scotland’s puffins fare against new offshore windfarms?

You don’t easily forget your first close encounter with a puffin. Mine was on the Isle of Lunga, the largest of the Treshnish Isles, in the spring of 2004, and I’ve had a soft spot for them ever since. I was on a whale-watching trip around the Inner Hebrides with Sea Life Surveys of Oban, and after ooh-ing and aah-ing at minke whales surfacing in the Sound of Mull and eating lunch near a rowdy seal colony on the eastern side of the Cairns of Coll, our skipper James Fairbairns found a sheltered spot off Lunga to drop anchor so that our small party could go ashore and look for birds.