Each year, adult puffins return to the same below-ground burrow where they previously raised their young. Seven years ago, researchers visited the Great Saltee to see how the puffins were fairing and checked the burrows. They didn’t find one chick. The island population had all but collapsed to just 120 birds, a drop of 90 per cent in a few years.: the brown rat, which will rapidly scour the island for occupied burrows during breeding time and eat any eggs and chicks inside.

The breeding season for puffins is nearly at an end here, and they’ll soon be off to the North Atlantic for eight months, having shed their colourful beaks and moulted their wing feathers. A few years ago, UCC researchers fitted tracking devices and discovered that they are flightless for two months of the year: resting on the waves, they drink seawater and swim up to 60m underwater, using their feet as a rudder to steer them towards their prey.