About this guide

Puffin Row is an independent publication about watching UK seabirds, seals and dolphins without disturbing them.

Old field guides are useful because they are honest about what you can and cannot tell from a distance. We have tried to borrow that habit. Each note begins with a direct answer to a question, then gives the reasoning, and tells you where to check the details that change.

Who writes it

The site is written by its editors. We are not a charity, a nature reserve, a government body or a tour operator, and we do not speak for any of them. We also accept contributed articles, and each one is marked with the contributor's name and any commercial interest.

How we check things

• Rules, distances, dates and phone numbers come from the organisation responsible for them, and we link to that page so that you can read it yourself.
• Seasons, access rules and site closures change. Please treat our notes as a starting point and check the current page before you travel.
• Where sources differ, we say so, as with the seal distances in our note on how close to go.
• We are not lawyers or vets. Our note on the law is general information, not legal advice, and a sick animal needs a rescue centre, not a website.

If we have got something wrong, please tell us and we will correct it.

Photograph credits

The photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licences. We have cropped and resized them, and they keep their original licences. Diagrams and the logo were drawn for this site.

• Puffin with sandeels (home page, Plate I): Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, source.
• Puffin outside a burrow: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, source.
• Puffin in flight: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, source.
• Guillemot colony (note 2, Plate II): Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0, source.
• Razorbill portrait: Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, source.
• Razorbill pair (Plate III): Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, source.
• Grey seal and pup: Walter Baxter, CC BY-SA 2.0, source.
• Grey seal pup (Plate VI): Walter Baxter, CC BY-SA 2.0, source.
• Beached bird survey at Lund: Mike Pennington, CC BY-SA 2.0, source.
• Nesting seabirds at Bempton: Graham Robson, CC BY-SA 2.0, source.
• Bottlenose dolphin (Plate VII): caroline legg, CC BY 2.0, source.
• Gannet (Plate IV): El gato Tito, CC BY-SA 4.0, source.
• Arctic tern (Plate V): Dunpharlain, CC BY-SA 4.0, source.