A sighting of a puffin fledgling has been confirmed on the cliffs near the National Trust’s Dancing Ledge site in Dorset, UK. It’s the first sighting of a young puffin at the cliffs in three decades.
The fledgling (which is also known as a puffling) was captured on a motion-sensor trail camera that was set up to monitor the colony.
The sheer cliff where it was spotted is home to the last breeding colony of puffins on mainland England’s south coast. While there are now just three breeding pairs of puffins in Dorset, there were more than 40 pairs in the 1950s.
Volunteers had spent more than 15 weeks monitoring the adult puffins courting, mating, carrying material and delivering fish to the nests hidden within the cliff crevice.
“With only three breeding pairs remaining, every chick matters,” explains Richard Caldow, who is leading the monitoring project. “One puffling alone won’t save this colony, but one is a whole lot better news than none.
“We first observed fish being taken into the ledge on 31st May, with the last fish delivery recorded on 5th July. Based on this, we estimated the puffling to be 38 to 40 days old. Puffins typically fledge between 38 and 44 days after hatching, so it has reached the minimum age at which it could leave the nest.”
Other pairs of puffins were observed carrying fish to different parts of the ledge but this behaviour stopped after 12th June, suggesting that any other chicks didn’t survive to fledglings.
The surviving puffling is expected to leave the ledge and its parents during the night and will spend the next few years alone at sea. It may then return to Purbeck from around the age of two – although puffins don’t usually breed until they are about four years old.
In March 2026, the National Trust organised the installation of motion-sensor cameras by the cliff to better understand why the puffin colony has been failing to produce more chicks. The cameras will be recovered after the breeding season, with volunteers reviewing thousands of images.
“Seeing the puffling was a great thrill, the first puffling that’s been recorded in Purbeck for a long time,” adds Caldow.
“It tells us that Purbeck puffins can still lay fertile eggs, hatch them and, at least in some years, find enough food to rear a chick and escape the attention of predators.”
