‘I was one of those people in the hazmat suits. We picked up 6,000 dead birds’

In the past year, avian flu has ravaged colonies of seabirds in the UK. Gwen Potter, a National Trust countryside manager working on the Farne Islands off the coast of north-east England, was among those on the frontline

In May last year, our seabirds were starting to settle, having flown here from all over the world. It is an explosion of life, sound and smell – and it looked as if it was going to be a really good year.

On the Farne Islands, off the coast of Northumberland, the most numerous bird is probably the puffin, we’ve also got a lot of guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, arctic terns, sandwich terns, common terns, loads of other fantastic seabirds. It’s such a spectacle seeing all these birds fly in. The cliff-nesting birds are jostling for space, they’re really crushed up against each other.