The bird population of Puffin Island has spent 200 years trying to recover from a shipwreck that brought unwelcome stowaways to its shores.

At the peak, more than 50,000 puffins resided on the island, just off the east coast of Anglesey.

But a shipwreck in the 1800s plagued it with brown rats. Their number exploded, and the consequences for the puffins were catastrophic.

To this day, the puffins that give the island its name have never got back up to their previous strength. But work is going on to try to reverse the damage.

An estimated 500,000 rodents were on the island by 1971, virtually wiping out the thriving sea bird population, cutting the number down to around 2000 by 1907, and leaving less than 20 pairs of puffins by the 1990s.

By 1998 the situation got so bad that the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) stepped in to eradicate the vermin.

Despite the intervention, according to Puffin Island Seabird Research, there were only eight breeding pairs of puffins left on the island in 2010.

However, more than 200 years on from the original shipwreck, it seems like the number of puffins and other sea birds such as guillemots, razorbills and cormorants are finally back on the rise.

A Research Officer for the RSPB said: “Since the rat eradication, the number of guillemots and razorbills have increased, and puffin numbers have also increased slowly.”

Each year, Natural Resources Wales (NRW) also carry out annual surveys of seabirds on Puffin Island.

The information feeds into ‘Seabird Counts’ - a UK seabird census, which repeats work that started 45 years ago to identify long-term trends in seabird populations.

NRW Senior Maritime Ornithologist, Matty Murphy said that while the increase in numbers is steady and unlikely to reach previous levels, the signs are still positive.

He added: “Protecting wildlife is a key part of our work and gathering this information is really important to assess long-term trends in our seabirds and health of our seas.”

“Rats were eradicated from Puffin Island back in 1999 and there is no evidence to suggest that they have returned.

“This year, 29 puffin were counted on the seas around Puffin Island.”