Boy, 8, sends rubber puffins around the world

An eight-year-old boy who is "curious about the world" has pioneered a unique way to get in touch with people he would never usually meet.

Harrison, from East Yorkshire, has been sending rubber puffins across the globe, hoping the recipients will get in touch with him before sending them on to their next adventure.

So far, the Go Puffin Project has sent ten rubber birds to locations including the Faroe Islands, Sweden, Madagascar, the Netherlands, Jamaica and New Zealand.

Harrison said: "I'm really excited about it and I'm just happy for it to become as big as it can get."

His dad, Jason, explained that Harrison had read an article about 29,000 rubber ducks falling from a container ship bound for Seattle from China in 1992.

When he learned that some had washed up as far away as Alaska to Indonesia, Harrison saw it "as an amazing adventure" and wanted to recreate a version of it using puffins, which are often seen along the East Yorkshire coast.

"Harrison's always been a curious and inquisitive boy with a real love for nature [and] he loved the idea of reaching out and meeting the people of these amazing places - places he might never visit or didn't know even existed," said Jason.

"In turn it seemed a great way to showcase Hull and East Yorkshire, which is a great and sometimes overlooked area."

The family picks random locations in the world using Google Maps and sends a box containing a puffin labelled with dates and information about where it's been and how to pass it on.

Harrison added: "We have a Facebook page and we've posted a few videos about family, friends and where we're sending them."

They would like to eventually add trackers to the puffins so they can see how many miles they've travelled and where they are at all times.

Jason said he had been "shocked" by the response so far and hoped the puffins would continue to "travel all over the globe".