It is a fact of life that if you report that five million limpets died as a result of the Sea Empress oil spill, it will produce less public reaction than the sight of a single puffin looking a bit unsteady on its feet.

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He found it on Seal Island five years ago while visiting his brother, Andre, who was there as a volunteer working with Project Puffin--a nonprofit group seeking to right an environmental wrong perpetrated 100 years ago.

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This place, a nesting ground for the Atlantic puffin, is also at the centre of a long-rumbling border dispute between America and Canada.

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There's even a chain of convenience stores called Puffin Stop.

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Puffin lovers in fact have spawned a retail industry of sorts in Maine.

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Part of the issue with the puffin hunting season is that the birds are now fetching a high price as a culinary delicacy.

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That, at any rate, is the belief of the Faeroese hardy and tenacious folk whose favourite delicacy, puffin chicks, can only be procured by dangling on a rope hundreds of feet below a sheer cliff-top and robbing the nests of unfortunate seabirds.

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