In such a beautiful place, it’s an utterly horrible thing to see.
Sky News has gained rare access to the Farne Islands, just off the coast of Northumberland.
These picturesque, uninhabited islands are looked after by National Trust rangers and are closed to visitors all summer.
Rangers first detected avian flu in the seabird population at the beginning of the breeding season, about eight weeks ago.
Initially, teams saw only a few dead chicks.
But soon they saw hundreds of carcasses — adult and baby puffins, kittiwakes, guillemots, bends and cormorants — lying dead on the cliffs.
“It’s devastating,” said Gwen Potter, National Trust Countryside Manager.
“We’ve collected thousands of birds on the islands, but really this is just the tip of the iceberg. The birds can die at sea or elsewhere along the coast, so it’s very difficult to quantify.
“But we’ve never seen an outbreak like this.”
Ranger teams, who normally count new chicks, now have the grim task of collecting their remains.
They wear full protective suits to prevent cross-contamination and use repurposed waste pickers to collect the carcasses.
They are bagged and taken back to the mainland and burned.
Within an hour of being on the island, one of the collection teams tells me they captured 300 dead guillemot chicks from a small patch of cliff edge.
The chicks may have died of avian flu or, alternatively, starvation if the parent bird died of the disease.
“It’s really sad,” said a ranger.
“You’ll often see the adult birds all go to one spot on the island to die — it’s like they seem to realize they’re dying.”
This is the worst outbreak ever in the UK
Outbreaks are normally limited to one species, but they have spread across several species of birds
‘This year it’s more random’
By the time they’re done, the teams will have filled dozens of pockets.
In total, National Trust teams estimate that 6,000 wild seabirds have died on these islands.
But this outbreak, the worst in British historyhas affected seabird colonies in the UK.
It also affects mainland poultry farms and affects the prices of poultry products in some areas.
“What is striking about the crisis we are facing is that this virus affects a range of species,” says forest ranger Tom Hendry.
Dozens of bags were filled with carcasses while Sky News was on the island
“Normally you’d have one type of bird that’s more affected than others, but this year it’s more random.”
Outbreaks of bird flu occur most years.
While there have been cases of bird flu spreading to humans, evidence suggests the risk is limited.
But the species that have attacked birds this year is the worst that teams working here have ever seen, and the result is devastating.
The numbers of some of these beautiful birds are already declining due to things like pollution, habitat loss and climate change.
The addition of this outbreak, on this scale, and in breeding season, is a terrible blow.