Disappearing puffins get "sat-nav"

Scientists are to fit "sat-nav" type devices to thousands of puffins to discover why their numbers are falling.

Over the past five years UK puffins are said to have seen a "dramatic" decline in numbers but experts don't know why.

They say young puffins are successfully fledging each year, their food of choice is plentiful but the numbers of them on the Farne Islands has dropped from from 55,674 to just 36,500 since 2003.

Now the distinctive looking birds will have GPS transmitters glued onto their feathers so researchers can see where they go and monitor their behaviour.

As the GPS devices are only transmitters the birds will not be able to use them to get directions to somewhere with better weather than the Northumberland coast.