Atlantic Puffin

Atlantic Puffin is a sea bird that belong to the Alcidae (auk) family. They are widely found across the atlantic. It have pnguin-like coloring but they sport a colorful beak that has led some to dub them the “sea parrot” or “clowns of the sea”. Other names:

• common puffin
• bottle-nose
• coulterneb
• Labrador auk
• large-billed puffin
• pope
• tammy norie

Personally, i known them as “flying penguins.” During the winter it beak fades to a drab grey and blooms with color again in the spring-suggesting that it may be attractive to potential mates.

Most of their live they live at sea, resting on the waves when not swimming. Their wings are use to stroke underwater with a flying motion which make them excellent swimmer. They can go to depths of 200 feet or 61 meters, though only for 20 or 30 seconds under water. Puffins typically hunt small fish like herring, sand eels, hake and capelin. They supplement their meals by drinking saltwater.

In the air, puffins are surprisingly fleet flyers. By flapping their wings up to 400 times per minute they can reach speeds of 55 miles or 88 kilometers an hour.

Atlantic puffin land on north Atlantic seacoasts and islands to form breeding colonies each spring and summer. Iceland is the breeding home of perhaps 60% of the world’s Atlantic puffins. The bird create burrows about 90 cm or 3 feet and often select precipitous rocky cliff tops to build their nests, which they line with feathers, seaweed and grasses.

April to mid-August is breeding season for puffins. When a puffin is around 3-5 years old, it will choose a partner at sea to mate with for life. Some pairs of puffins reunite within the colony and exhibit a special behavior known as “billing” where the two birds rub their beaks together. This often draws an excited crowd of other puffin to watch.

Females lay a single egg, and both parents take turns feeding it by carrying it by carrying small fish back to the nest in their relatively spacious bills for about 40 days. Atlantic puffins have the ability to carry several fish in their breaks at one time. They push the fish to the back of their mouth with their tongue, where ridges at the top of their bill secure the fish in place. In general, they can hod about 10 fish in their beak at once.

The chick stays in the burrow until it is able to fly. The young puffin uses a toilet area towards the front of the burrow away from the nest to stay clean. It cannot risk its feathers soiled and ruining the waterproof protection they provide. After 45 days, they chick leaves the burrow and spends 3-5 years at sea learning about feeding places and choosing a mate.

In the wild, puffin can live about 20 years. Their main predator is the great black-backed gull, which can capture a puffin mid-flight or swoop in on a puffin on the ground. Herring gulls are also a threat because they steal puffins’ fish (sometimes right from their mouth), and they pull puffin chicks or eggs from their nests.

Puffin couples often reunite at the same burrow site each year. It is unclear how these birds navigate back to their home grounds. They may use visual reference points, smells, sounds, the Earth’s magnetic fields-or perhaps even the stars.

Conservation Status

With 6 million alive today, Atlantic puffins are not endangered. But some populations have been drastically reduced. Puffin colonies are threatened by overfishing, which causes a shortage of food for adults to feed their young. Oil spills also pose a danger. Oil not only destroys puffins' waterproofing, it also makes them sick when they clean it off their feathers. Finally, global warming adversely affects puffins, who are adapted to living in waters about 0-20°C (32-68°F) and catching fish who are also adapted to those colder temperatures. Global warming also causes rising sea levels, which could flood out puffins' breeding grounds.

What You Can Do to Help

If you would like to help puffins, you can help curb global warming by engaging in environmentally-responsible activities like using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs, cutting down your carbon emissions, and recycling. You can also adopt a puffin from Audubon Society's Project Puffin.

Atlantic Puffin Distribution