Puffins at three o'clock!' The gleeful exclamation from tour guide Cat Johnson has me – and three dozen other excited seabird spotters – reaching for our cameras and jostling for the best view from the boat.

Buffeted by the choppy Firth of Forth, we're about to watch the opening scene in one of nature's most wondrous love stories. A spectacle that enhances the magic of the rugged Scottish coastline.

For eight long months, the pair of puffins now bobbing about before us, off Craigleith island near North Berwick, had been lost to one another.

The hunt for food had sent each of them on a lonesome sojourn far out into the Atlantic, where they had camouflaged themselves by shedding their glossy black and white feathers, and the orange and blue plates that cover their beaks in spring.

With their dazzling colours restored, however, they had returned home to breed, and – as puffins are touchingly monogamous – the pair we saw on Tuesday appeared to be rekindling their courtship.

Assuming they breed successfully, they will then conceal their single egg in a burrow until it hatches, some 40 days hence. They will then feed and nurture their baby 'puffling' as it builds up the strength to fly.

As this annual ritual unfolds, the nesting lovebirds will perform comedy shows that thrill spectators from all over the world (sitting near me on the 'Seafari' boat were Spaniards and Scandinavians) and are only slightly exaggerated in cartoons and animations that delight children, such as Puffin Rock.

Though they seem clumsy and awkward, puffins are clever too. Remote cameras have captured them scratching themselves with sticks, perhaps to clean their feathers, making them the first seabirds proved intelligent enough to use tools.

For all these reasons, and more, the collective noun commonly used for puffins is 'a circus'.

Yet they are sometimes called 'an improbability of puffins', and though this term derives from their eccentric behaviour and amusing physiognomy, wildlife experts fear it is about to take on an altogether more tragic meaning.

Soon, they say, the 'improbability' might refer to the unlikelihood of spotting a puffin along this stretch of Scotland's eastern coast in the not too distant future.

There are similar concerns for other seabirds, such as guillemots, kittiwakes, gannets and razorbills, all of which we saw on the boat tour from North Berwick, and a clifftop walk further south at St Abb's Head.

For while these spectacular flyers flourish in the strong gusts blowing across the North Sea, the prevailing weather conditions also make this an ideal area for wind turbines – and in a clash between birds and blades there can be only one winner. Since the Scottish National Party (SNP) are as ideologically hidebound by Net Zero as Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, a plethora of wind-farm projects already pebbledash these waters, some in operation, others planned, or under construction.

All will be dwarfed, however, by Berwick Bank, a gigantic wind farm soon to be built, some 30 miles out in the Firth of Forth.

A showcase emblem of Scotland's fast-track transition from oil and gas production to renewables, it has the blessing of Whitehall and Holyrood.

Miliband has sanctioned a controversial deal guaranteeing its developers, SSE, a generous fixed minimum price for the electricity it will supply.

And the SNP, whose green energy crusade is similarly evangelical and features prominently in its manifesto for next month's Scottish parliamentary election, lost no time in consenting to the vast wind farm.

Thickly forested with more than 300 turbines reaching up 1,165ft at the tip of their blades – twice the height of Blackpool Tower – Berwick Bank will cover an area four times bigger than the city of Edinburgh.

SSE boasts that it will be one of the 'largest offshore opportunities in the world', generating enough yearly electricity to power six million British homes.

The company, whose shares are largely held by institutional investors, claims it could avoid eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide output annually: roughly the amount produced by all Scotland's cars.

To anyone concerned by climate change, all this will sound mighty impressive. Behind this seemingly noble project, however, there lies a sobering irony.

For when Berwick Bank's turbines start whirring, ostensibly for the good of the planet, thousands of Scotland's most iconic seabirds will be wiped out: an ecological catastrophe that Net Zero Ed and like-minded zealots north of the border appear to have conveniently brushed aside.

Quoting research commissioned by the Scottish government, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) say Berwick Bank could kill 2,808 guillemots, 814 kittiwakes, 260 gannets and 154 razorbills in its first year of operation. Puffins could escape relatively lightly because of their low trajectory when flying and because their main breeding ground is farther away, on the Isle of May, where 52,000 pairs nest in spring. 'Only' 65 are expected to perish in the first 12 months. However, over the wind farm's expected lifetime these numbers could multiply 25 or 30-fold.

As we marvel at the riotous activity of thousands of the threatened birds nesting on St Abb's Head, Aedan Smith, RSPB Scotland's head of policy and advocacy, explains grimly how they will suffer and die.

'The most spectacular and catastrophic way is a collision with giant blades moving at 100 metres per second,' he tells me. 'One blow would kill outright.

'In many ways, though, displacement is the biggest worry. These birds aren't used to having huge barriers in their environment, so when they're foraging for food for their chicks they'll try to fly around them.

'This will make their journeys to feeding grounds much longer, so they might expire for lack of energy, and while they're gone the chicks will starve.'

The RSPB does not oppose wind farms sited where they do minimal harm, he stresses, but given Berwick Bank's proximity to some of Scotland's most important seabird colonies, it will deliver renewable energy in 'the worst possible way'.

Walking with us on the windswept headland at St Abb's, Ciaran Hatsell, National Trust for Scotland's head ranger, agrees.

He escorts us to a cove he calls Seabird City, filled with black and white razorbills, which he likens to 'James Bonds' wearing tuxedos in Casino Royale, and flotillas of circling kittiwakes: 'The noisy neighbours.'

'If the figures are correct, they're all going to be gone pretty soon,' laments Ciaran, whose knowledge of and adoration for the birds is infectious. 'That just can't be allowed to happen.'

We fall into a conversation with four English women, the class of '71 out on their annual reunion hike, and their jaunty mood darkens as the ranger describes the damage Berwick Bank will cause.

'If you look at other wind farms, they aren't all they're made out to be,' says one of the group, Jackie Orr. 'Parts come from China, and they're not cheap. What's wrong with nuclear?'

In this corner of Scotland, many people are asking the same question.

A short drive up the A1 stands the rusting grey hulk of Torness – the last remnant of Scotland's once-vibrant atomic power industry. Though the plant employs around 550 people from nearby towns such as Dunbar, and has operated safely for almost four decades, powering two million homes at its peak (without any concerns over seabirds), in 2030 it will be decommissioned.

In its headlong race for carbon neutrality by 2050, Labour finds a place for nuclear energy and would replace this ageing reactor with small modular ones, if it could.

However, new nuclear projects in Scotland require approval from the devolved government, and the SNP (whose Net Zero target falls five years earlier than Labour's) has pulled the plug on them.

Speaking to the Daily Mail this week, Norman Hampshire, the Labour leader of East Lothian Council, attacked the planned closure as 'a huge blow' to the local economy.

Proponents of Berwick Bank claim that the jobs it provides will offset those lost at Torness, but Mr Hampshire believes most will end after construction is completed, forcing skilled workers to move away.

Arguments over Scotland's energy policy will clearly play a major part deciding the outcome of the May 7 election.

Nowhere more so than in Aberdeen, the creaking cradle of a North Sea oil and gas industry that Miliband and the SNP leader John Swinney seem hellbent on consigning to history – though their dogma has been muted by the global oil crisis.

Arriving in the Granite City this week, I found it unrecognisable from the oil-rich El Dorado I last visited over a quarter of a century ago. By then, the great North Sea boom was already fading. Predictions that it would bring a golden age of prosperity and self-reliance had been debunked.

Yet the flow was still plentiful enough to make Aberdeen the nation's fastest-growing city, with property prices second only to London's.

Hotels, restaurants and bars thronged with multi-national oilmen. Direct flights from Texas brought in cowboy-booted troubleshooters and billionaires who mixed business with golf on the links.

Today, those days seem like a mirage. Last year, Aberdeen's three-year economic growth was forecast to be less than one per cent, the lowest rate in the UK. In 2023, it was one of only two cities with fewer jobs than it had in 2010. The once chaotic port has empty berths; handsome neoclassical office buildings along the 'Granite Mile' are boarded up; department stores such as John Lewis and Debenhams have pulled out.

Waiting for a bus on Union Street, I met John McGregor, 63, one of Aberdeen's fast-diminishing oil industry band of workers. He clutched a Greggs bakery carrier marked 'bag some joy', but it didn't match his demeanour.

Seven years ago, he said, overtime was plentiful at the rig supply firm he works for. Now, 'it's nowhere near as busy' and he is off-duty every other week.

'It's all that eco stuff and this windfall tax,' he complained, alluding to the crippling 78 pc Energy Profits Levy Labour has slapped on oil and gas firms.

'That and their ban on new drilling licences. I appreciate that it [the transition to renewables] has got to come eventually, but we aren't geared up for it. It's no good for me personally or the city.'

Mr McGregor is likely to vote Reform because they would allow exploitation of two untapped fossil fuel fields off Scotland's North-East coast, Rosebank and Jackdaw, and promise to get Britain's oil reserves gushing again.

However, as Gordon and Buchan's Tory MP Harriet Cross told me this week, the Conservatives – who would tackle climate change in a more pragmatic way – are equally eager to open these fields, bringing 3,000 new jobs to Aberdeen and boosting Britain's energy security at a time when it is most needed.

She decries Labour policies that see Britain importing fuels such as Qatari liquefied natural gas, when Jackdaw's cleaner gas could heat over 1.4 million homes. The Rosebank oilfield, thought to contain up to 500 million barrels, could boost our production by eight per cent.

Canvassing for Aberdeen's Tory candidates, Harriet Cross, who scraped into Westminster by just 878 votes, says anger over intransigent energy policies constantly surfaces on doorsteps because it 'underpins' every aspect of north-east life.

With yet more irony, some embittered Aberdeen trade unionists liken Labour's pell-mell abandonment of North Sea oil to Margaret Thatcher's fast-tracked coalmine closures in the mid-1980s.

Perhaps, though, the mounting resentment over their doctrinaire policies are beginning to register.

Last month, as the US-Iran war closed the Strait of Hormuz, Rachel Reeves surprisingly backed a ramping-up of North Sea oil production, and the Chancellor appears to be dragging a reluctant Miliband – who has said opening Rosebank would be 'cilmate vandalism' – along with her.

Swinney, too, says the oil crisis has 'changed the balance of the argument'. This week, however, when the First Minister declined to debate election rivals on a BBC Question Time panel in Aberdeen, Scottish Tory Russell Findlay accused him of ducking out because his supposed rapprochement with the oil and gas sector was a sham.

In three weeks, the electorate will no doubt make their views on this crucial issue very clear.

But back to the birds. Oil and gas installations, it must be said, can also kill them, though as they are located far farther out at sea than wind farms, the RSPB says fatalities are mainly among migrating songbirds attracted to the rigs' flares, and the number of deaths, though unknown, is likely to be lower.

Final approval for Berwick Bank is contingent on SSE devising a 'compensation plan' to conserve seabirds, such as protecting feeding grounds and controlling predators. The company promises to deliver this later in the year.

However, Aedan Smith remains unconvinced. 'They might say they'll compensate for losses around Berwick Bank by increasing puffin numbers in the Shetland Islands, or somewhere,' he says. 'That's no good to anyone, is it?'

So why can't the wind farm be moved to a new location, far away from breeding grounds such as the Isle of May and Rock, home to a similar number of gannets? SSE say permission to build Berwick Bank was granted after plans were rigorously scrutinised by the Scottish government's Marine Directorate. The precise site was chosen by the Crown Estate and based on offshore wind zones identified by the British Government.

They also claim they will minimise its impact on seabirds by, for example, adjusting turbine hubs to provide more clearance for them; and reducing the size of the site by almost a third.

As the eco-Left rushes to impose a flawed green ideology riddled with contradictions, puffin aficionados – myself among them – will pray that these measures work.

The thought of thousands of seabirds being cut to shreds by the flailing blades of turbines is too terrible to countenance.