Last chance saloon'

The race to save Dorset's vanishing Purbeck puffins

- Steven Morris

Reaching the vantage point is a tricky business. First, there's a hop across a fence into "Scratch Arse quarry" - so called because the stone workers used to find it such a cramped space to work in that their backsides would bump into the rock face. Then, a tiptoe through the slopes of early spider orchids and wild cabbage before a dizzying scramble down to the edge of the cliff.

Teams of hardy volunteers will be making the trip this spring, come rain or shine, to try to solve the mystery of the Purbeck puffins. This stretch of Dorset coast is the last known regular nesting site for puffins on the mainland of southern England.

In the 1950s there were about 80 birds nesting on this coast, but the number of pairs has dropped to three and there have been no definitive sightings of fledglings for years. If the trend is not reversed, the colony will probably vanish within 15 years.

"It is very worrying," said Richard Caldow, a marine ornithologist who has been monitoring the birds since 2023. "In recent years, only three nesting pairs of puffins have been seen, along with a few adolescent birds. Without intervention, they are probably facing extinction here."