The first hint of what was to come were the three guys down near the jetty.

Their green jackets were streaked with white, and through the binoculars it looked like a sort of tundra-inspired paramilitary camouflage. They had construction helmets on their heads. Again streaked with white. And they were hopping around and waving their arms.

"The BBC are here," said the captain, as if that explained everything.

As our boat drew nearer to Inner Farne Island and the lonely lighthouse came into clearer view, more figures were to be seen. They were running, blundering or stumbling down the steep narrow path to the sea. Some had jackets pulled over their heads. One was waving an umbrella. Another was flailing a newspaper. There were screams.

"If you're getting off, now's the time," said the captain a little later. He sounded amused.

"You're not coming?"

"No chance, mate. I'll pick you up in an hour. Don't be late. You won't want to miss the boat."

Lunatics aplenty

An hour seemed at that moment a miserly allotment of time. The June afternoon was deliciously warm, the little island was glowing with flowers, there were cliffs to explore, the romance of the historic lighthouse, puffins fluttering past in wobbly flight with silver sand eels clutched in their comical beaks, gulls cruising, the distant view of other islands, the wonderful mix of sea salt and sun-baked heather in the air.

OK, there were clearly lunatics aplenty -- the one with the umbrella looked particularly disturbed -- but eccentric behavior is par for the course if the BBC are about.

We disembarked. And the head wounds started . . .

The Farne Islands are located a short distance from the coast of England's most northeastern county of Northumberland, and during the summer months they are serviced by regular boat trips from the picturesque harbor village of Seahouses on the mainland. At low tide there are 28 islands. At high tide the North Sea branch of the Atlantic swallows half of the Farnes, leaving just 14. Most are composed of strikingly attractive columnar dolorite rock pillars streaked with guano.

The islands' history is as colorful as they are; early Christian saints, most notably St. Cuthbert, who legend has it vanquished a pack of cowled, goat-riding demons who were haunting a sailors' graveyard, used them as a refuge for meditation. St. Aidan summoned winds to blow the fires set by pagan armies on the mainland back in the invader's faces.

Then things slipped a bit. Degenerate 15th-century monks feasted and fornicated on Inner Farne and even pawned the chalice of St. Mary's Chapel to fund their infamous lifestyles.

However, generations of hardy monks and lighthouse-keepers kept warning beacons lit (and rather dubiously were allowed to salvage goods from wrecked ships as compensation for their toil) from as early as the ninth century. Grace Darling, inspiration for today's lifeboat service, famously risked her life in a storm in 1838 to rescue victims of the wrecked steamship Forfarshire (her father, less famously, refused the crew of a second lifeboat shelter in his lighthouse after a row over who got to snaffle the Forfarshire's cargo).

The principal lure of the Farnes today, however, are the grey seals and the birds. The seal colonies are some of the most important in Europe, and the eerie moans of the greys have probably saved more ships from catastrophe than the lighthouses, by warning their crews of the presence of rocks.

Safe from mainland predators, tens of thousands of puffins, cormorants, shags, gulls, petrels, eider duck, auks, gulls and oyster catchers congregate in vast numbers on the Farnes to breed and feed. And let us not forget the terns. Several tern species visit the Farnes: the Sandwich tern, the roseate tern, the common tern (which despite its name is rare here) and the Arctic tern.

Little blighters

Barely half a minute on Inner Farne and we encounter our first Arctic terns. These elegant little birds with shiny eyes, crisp gray-and-white plumage and vivid red legs and beaks, see more sunlight than any other creature on Earth. They spend their winters in the southern hemisphere summer and then fly north, often as far as the Arctic, in the northern hemisphere summer when the long days seem to last for ever. They lay clutches of three green, blue, gray or brown eggs in shallow scrapes sometimes lined with sea campion leaves and flowers.

But those terns don't like company. Ow! Hell's teeth! Terns rise from their eggs and fly shrieking at our heads. They flutter in front of our faces, they peck our scalps (drawing blood, the little blighters) -- and to round off the performance they void their bowels in our hair.

The green-and-white jackets? All is now clear. The BBC team are walking Jackson Pollock paintings with tern guano acting as pigment.

We run. This doesn't help. No sooner has one tern seen us off than we inadvertently enter the territory of another. Incoming! Pecks! Screams! Bombs away! Prior to the Battle of Inner Farne, I'd always regarded bird-watching as a gentle, relaxing sort of hobby. Perhaps even a trifle dull. No longer. The Arctic terns aren't the only feathered fiends in residence. If an intruder gets too close to a Fulmar petrel's nest, my guide book notes that it will spit a pungent stomach bile. The guide adds, somewhat irrelevantly, that said fluid is rich in Vitamin A. Irritated shags make threatening gestures and hiss. If ignored they then follow the terns' example and use their beaks.

It must be stressed, though, that not all the multitude of birds on the Farne Islands are out to get you.

In season (May, June and early July), there are close to 40,000 breeding pairs of puffins, and these cheerful little chaps positively welcome visitors. When humans are about, predatory herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls keep their distance.

To be absolutely safe, of course, you can always simply cruise among the Farnes admiring the bird colonies from the sanctuary of the ocean. But just don't forget that sound piece of advice in "Apocalypse Now": Never get off the boat!