Toy puffins hidden throughout the Lothians to highlight bird's plight

THEY could be hiding on buses, peering out from castle turrets, or perched on top of statues. Puffin mania will this week sweep Scotland as a campaign to raise awareness of the plight of the threatened birds hits the streets.

• The Scottish Seabird Centre is hiding hundreds of toy puffins throughout the Lothians to highlight the birds' plight. Picture: Greg Macvean

Spotting one of hundreds of toy puffins hidden in secret locations around Edinburgh, the Lothians and Fife could bag the finder a video camera or an ipod.

The toy puffins have been hidden in schools, on buses, in airports, on landmarks and in castles. They started appearing yesterday and will continue to be hidden in unexpected locations until the end of the week.

The Scottish Seabird Centre, a conservation charity and visitor attraction in North Berwick, which runs a campaign called SOS Puffin, is behind the scheme.

The charity hopes the giant treasure hunt will highlight the plight of the colourful creatures, known as the clowns of the bird world.

SOS Puffin aims to help save the birds in the Firth of Forth. Puffins live on the islands of Craigleith, Fidra and the Lamb – a tiny rocky outcrop recently bought by illusionist Uri Geller.

The islands were once home to one of Scotland's largest colonies of puffins. Ten years ago there were 28,000 pairs on Craigleith alone.

However, warmer temperatures have led to the invasion of an alien plant, the tree mallow, which grows to over nine feet tall.

It has taken over Craigleith and prevented puffins from reaching their burrows to nest. Numbers of the birds dropped to just a few thousand as a result.

Lynda Dalgleish from the Scottish Seabird Centre said the aim was to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by the puffins due to the rampant tree mallow.

"It's got a really pretty flower but it grows like a tree as high as nine feet tall," she said.

"It covered Craigleith like a forest. Thousands of puffins breed on Craigleith and a lot of them will have been born on the island.

"They have a nesting instinct to go back to it but they can't access their burrows because the tree roots are so dense."

A team of about 500 volunteers, known as "marsh bashers" have been working throughout the year, cutting down the invasive plant, and have made good progress on Craigleith. Soon they will start work on Fidra.

There are already signs that puffin numbers are beginning to pick up.

In the latest survey, 95 per cent of burrows that had been uncovered by the volunteers have been reoccupied by puffins.

Each of the toy puffins has been tagged with a unique number.

Each day, six of the birds will win the finder a prize, ranging from an ipod to a camcorder. Ms Dalgleish hinted that good places to look for the puffins would be Edinburgh Castle, Princes Street Gardens and the Walter Scott memorial in Princes Street.

"They stand out a mile because they are so bright and so out of context," she said.