The puffins are increasing in number. The biggest puffin colony in England is reported to have bounced back by five per cent from its earlier count in 2008, with breeding pairs located recently. 

Small surveys by the wardens in the Farne Islands — the colony off the coast of Northumbria, show that the numbers of birds have increased in the past two years. The count had gone down drastically earlier. Researchers, however, are not very enthusiastic; they fear, there can be a crash in the puffins’ numbers again.

The puffins have now been fitted with ‘sat-nav’ technology so that they can be tracked during the breeding period and later in the winter. According to Richard Bevan of the University of Newcastle, small GPS trackers have been temporarily glued on the back of 12 birds to study their foraging habits. It is revealed that the puffins are raising chicks in burrows on Brownsman Island, and are heading to feeding spots in the sea.

A long, long wait

Finally the flower bloomed after 92 years. The gardeners at the Rowallane Garden near Saintfield County Down, United Kingdom, have been tending the Chinese Goat Horn tree since 1908 with a hope that one day its flowers will thrill everyone. And it did so recently.

The first buds appeared last week as a pale white flower with a gentle scent. “We had noticed in June that the tree was making flower bud growth which has slowly developed over the past few days or so,” head gardener Averill Milligan says. “We were intrigued to see what they were going to look like”.

Records show that plant collector Ernest H Wilson had brought this particular plant from Sichuan in western China in 1908. Rowallane purchased the plant for three shillings and six pence from Donard Nursery in Newcastle, County Down.

 The plant gets its name from the long, curved, spindle-shaped fruits which resemble the horn of the goat.