Atlantic puffins are genuine migrants, spending roughly eight months of every year out on the open ocean, far from the coastal cliffs where most people see them. After breeding wraps up in mid-to-late summer, puffins leave their colonies and scatter across the North Atlantic, some traveling thousands of kilometers before returning the following spring. But puffin migration looks nothing like the neat, arrow-straight flyways of geese or terns. Tracking studies over the past two decades have revealed something far stranger and more individual.
Where Puffins Go After the Breeding Season
Once chicks fledge and the breeding season ends, adult Atlantic puffins head to sea. Most leave their colonies in August, and from there their paths diverge dramatically. A large multi-colony tracking study that followed 270 adult puffins from 13 populations across the North Atlantic identified several major wintering hotspots: waters around and south of Ireland, the ocean southwest of Iceland, the entrance of the Labrador Sea off eastern Canada, and the area near the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone in the mid-Atlantic Ridge.1Current Biology. Range-wide, Multicolony Tracking Reveals Driving Factors of Migration in a Declining Seabird These are not narrow corridors. Puffins spread out across a vast swath of ocean, and most individuals visit multiple locations during a single winter rather than parking in one spot.
How far any given puffin travels depends heavily on which colony it breeds at. Birds from some colonies average less than 250 kilometers from home over winter, while others routinely travel more than 1,700 kilometers away. The total distance covered during the non-breeding season varies by thousands of kilometers between colonies.1Current Biology. Range-wide, Multicolony Tracking Reveals Driving Factors of Migration in a Declining Seabird Puffins nesting in high-Arctic Greenland, for instance, rack up especially impressive distances. Males from that population traveled an average of about 7,970 kilometers total on their annual migration, while females averaged nearly 12,000 kilometers. One female was recorded covering more than 13,600 kilometers in a single non-breeding season.2PubMed Central. Migratory movements of Atlantic puffins Fratercula arctica naumanni from high Arctic Greenland
Every Puffin Has Its Own Route
One of the most surprising discoveries from geolocator tracking is that each puffin follows its own highly individual migration path, and repeats it year after year. A study tracking puffins from a colony on Skomer Island, Wales, found that birds showed a complex and dispersive pattern of movement. In August, some flew northwest toward Greenland, others moved more locally, and still others headed south toward the Bay of Biscay and even the Mediterranean. In autumn, many shifted northward or northeastward into the open North Atlantic before drifting south again later in winter, then returning to the colony from various directions in spring.3PLOS ONE. A Dispersive Migration in the Atlantic Puffin and Its Implications for Migratory Navigation
What makes this remarkable is the consistency. When researchers tracked the same individuals across successive years, each bird repeated its own idiosyncratic route, even though neighboring birds from the same colony might take completely different paths. One bird headed northwest to the western Atlantic year after year, while another from the same colony reliably went southeast to the central Mediterranean after spending autumn south of Iceland.3PLOS ONE. A Dispersive Migration in the Atlantic Puffin and Its Implications for Migratory Navigation These are not random wanderings. They are well-directed, individually learned routes that each bird seems to develop and then stick with for life. The researchers described them as “well directed migrations and not simple dispersal movements.”
This is unusual in the bird world. Many migratory species show strong population-level consistency, with most members of a colony heading in roughly the same direction. Puffins appear to operate on a different principle: the colony scatters, but each individual has a personal program.
Males and Females Can Take Very Different Paths
Sex-based differences in puffin migration are especially pronounced in high-Arctic populations. In a study of puffins from northwest Greenland, males traveled to their farthest wintering point an average of about 2,600 kilometers from the colony, while females reached an average of roughly 4,800 kilometers. Females in that population used what researchers describe as leap-frog migration, bypassing the areas where males settled and pushing much farther south. Males, by contrast, showed tight synchrony with one another, using a chain-migration pattern where individuals moved in step and stayed at the northern limits of the species’ range. Two of the tracked females migrated all the way to the southern limit of the Atlantic puffin’s range, while the six tracked males wintered along the sea-ice edge in the far north.2PubMed Central. Migratory movements of Atlantic puffins Fratercula arctica naumanni from high Arctic Greenland
This extreme sexual segregation in wintering areas is striking. Males and females from the same breeding colony, even the same pair, may spend the entire winter thousands of kilometers apart in completely different ocean environments. Researchers suspect the pattern may relate to body-size differences and competition for food, but the evidence is still thin on exactly why this happens.
What Drives How Far a Puffin Migrates
The multi-colony tracking study found that two factors stood out as predictors of migration distance: the size of the breeding colony and the quality of local winter conditions. Puffins from larger colonies migrated farther, and so did puffins whose home waters had lower productivity (measured by chlorophyll levels, a proxy for food availability) during winter. This pattern supports the idea that competition for food is a key driver. When many thousands of birds breed in one place, the surrounding seas cannot support them all through winter, so birds push outward.1Current Biology. Range-wide, Multicolony Tracking Reveals Driving Factors of Migration in a Declining Seabird
Latitude plays a role too. Puffins wintering at higher latitudes spent more time foraging, experienced colder water, and burned more energy per day than those wintering farther south. The birds that traveled farthest also spent more time in flight and had higher daily energy expenditure, and they tended to end up in waters that were actually less productive than the areas used by birds that stayed closer to home.1Current Biology. Range-wide, Multicolony Tracking Reveals Driving Factors of Migration in a Declining Seabird In other words, migrating farther does not necessarily mean finding better conditions. The birds pushed out by competition from big colonies may actually have a harder winter, which raises interesting questions about whether those colonies are more vulnerable to population decline.
Flightless at Sea During Molt
Puffins face a challenge that most migratory land birds do not: they undergo a complete wing molt during the non-breeding season, shedding and regrowing their flight feathers. During this period, they cannot fly at all and must survive entirely by swimming and diving. A study using dual biologging devices found evidence that some puffins go through two separate flightless molt periods within a single non-breeding season, with the total time spent unable to fly reaching up to 77 days. This was observed specifically in birds that undertook longer migrations of more than 2,000 kilometers.4PubMed Central. A new biologging approach reveals unique flightless molt strategies of Atlantic puffins
Being flightless at sea is inherently risky. A puffin that cannot fly cannot escape storms, oil slicks, or other surface hazards by taking to the air. It also cannot relocate quickly if food becomes scarce. The discovery that some individuals are flightless for more than two months total adds a layer of vulnerability to the already demanding winter period. Where and when puffins choose to molt likely matters a great deal for their survival, and the finding that long-distance migrants may face two flightless periods rather than one suggests that ambitious migratory strategies come with real costs.
How Puffins Are Tracked at Sea
Almost everything we know about puffin migration comes from tiny devices called geolocators, which are attached to the birds’ legs during the breeding season. These loggers record light levels throughout the day, allowing researchers to estimate the bird’s latitude and longitude based on the timing of sunrise and sunset. The devices are small enough that puffins can carry them without significant hindrance, but they must be physically recovered the following breeding season to download the data, which means researchers can only get information from birds that return to the same colony and are recaptured.
The multi-colony study that mapped wintering hotspots across the North Atlantic combined geolocator data from 270 adults across 13 populations spanning Canada, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, the UK, and the US.5Current Biology. Range-wide, Multi-colony Tracking Reveals Routes and Environmental Drivers of Migration in a Declining Seabird Earlier work used smaller samples but was still revealing. One study recovered data from 18 of 27 tagged birds and found the complex, individually consistent routes described earlier.3PLOS ONE. A Dispersive Migration in the Atlantic Puffin and Its Implications for Migratory Navigation Device failure and the difficulty of recapturing birds mean that sample sizes are always smaller than researchers would like, and the data is biased toward adults that survive and return. We know almost nothing about where juvenile puffins go during the years between fledging and their first return to breed.
Newer approaches are expanding what is possible. The dual-device study that revealed flightless molt periods combined geolocators with time-depth recorders, giving simultaneous data on location, diving behavior, and flight activity.4PubMed Central. A new biologging approach reveals unique flightless molt strategies of Atlantic puffins Some studies have also examined nocturnal behavior, finding that puffins rarely forage or fly at night while at sea. Instead, they rest on the water surface, often tucking one leg under a wing, spending roughly 42% of nighttime hours in that leg-tucked sleeping posture.6Behavioral Ecology. Drivers and fitness consequences of dispersive migration in a pelagic seabird
Tufted Puffins Stay Closer to Home
The Atlantic puffin’s Pacific relative, the tufted puffin, takes a different approach. Geolocator data from 42 complete migration tracks showed that tufted puffins are short-distance migrants, wintering an average of just 616 kilometers from their breeding colonies. They departed breeding grounds in early September and spent roughly 152 days in their wintering areas, primarily in the deep offshore waters of the eastern Gulf of Alaska and the adjacent northeast Pacific. Spring migration began by late March.7Frontiers in Marine Science. Light-level geolocation reveals the short-distance non-breeding movements and distribution of tufted puffins throughout the Northeast Pacific Ocean
Like their Atlantic cousins, tufted puffins showed some sex-based differences: males made fewer stops and arrived at wintering areas earlier than females. Both sexes shifted gradually southward as the non-breeding season progressed. But the overall scale of movement is far more modest than what Atlantic puffins do. An Atlantic puffin from a high-Arctic colony may travel ten or twenty times farther than a tufted puffin during the same period. The reasons likely include differences in ocean geography, food distribution, and the fact that the northeast Pacific where tufted puffins breed remains relatively productive through winter compared to some parts of the North Atlantic.
Winter Storms and Survival
The North Atlantic in winter is one of the roughest ocean environments on Earth, and puffins spending months on its surface are exposed to severe weather. Each winter, major cyclones roll across the ocean, and the most intense ones cause mass seabird die-offs known as “winter wrecks.” A study of these events found that cyclonic conditions do not appear to increase the birds’ energy needs directly. Instead, the birds seem to die because storms make their prey unavailable or prevent them from feeding.8PubMed. North Atlantic winter cyclones starve seabirds In practical terms, a puffin can survive cold and rough seas, but it cannot survive several days of being unable to catch fish.
These wreck events hit alcids (the family that includes puffins, murres, and razorbills) especially hard because these birds sit on the water surface and dive for food, making them directly vulnerable to surface conditions. A puffin that happens to be in its flightless molt phase during a major storm is in an even worse position, unable to relocate to calmer waters. The combination of extended flightless periods and unpredictable winter storms may be one of the most important and least understood sources of adult mortality in puffin populations.
Human Threats Along Migration Routes
Puffins at sea face risks beyond natural storms. An expert assessment of human-caused hazards to seabirds in the western North Atlantic ranked fisheries bycatch, especially in suspended gill nets, as the greatest overall threat. Oiling was ranked second, and the experts considered it to have the greatest potential impact specifically on alcids, including Atlantic puffins, because these species spend so much time sitting on the water surface where oil accumulates. Offshore wind turbines, marine debris, light pollution, and vessel traffic were also assessed but ranked considerably lower as overall risks.9Biological Conservation. Synthesizing expert opinion to assess the at-sea risks to seabirds in the western North Atlantic
The challenge with managing these threats is that puffin wintering areas are vast and shift throughout the season. A bird might be off the coast of Ireland in October and near the mid-Atlantic Ridge by January. Traditional conservation approaches that protect fixed areas are harder to apply when the species you are trying to protect is scattered across hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of open ocean, changing location month by month.
Climate Change and Shifting Winter Ranges
Climate projections suggest that puffin wintering distributions will shift as ocean temperatures change. A modeling study predicted that winter distributions of North Atlantic seabirds, including puffins, would shift under climate change scenarios, with the effects becoming especially pronounced if global warming exceeds 2°C. Under a “no mitigation” scenario, the changes would be large enough to modify the major seabird wintering hotspots across the North Atlantic.10PubMed. Meeting Paris agreement objectives will temper seabird winter distribution shifts in the North Atlantic Ocean
What this means in practice is that the places where puffins spend their winters may not be the same places in 30 or 50 years. If wintering hotspots shift, the birds will need to adjust their routes and timing accordingly, and the match between where puffins are and where their prey is could degrade. Since we already know that puffins from larger colonies end up in less productive waters and burn more energy, any further reduction in winter food availability could disproportionately hurt the biggest and most important breeding populations. The tracking data being collected now serves as a baseline for measuring those changes as they unfold.
Why Puffins Seem to Vanish Every Winter
If you visit a puffin colony in December, you will find it completely empty. Every bird is at sea. Puffins do not use coastal habitats during the non-breeding season the way gulls or cormorants do. They are fully pelagic for eight or more months of the year, living on the open ocean surface, diving for fish, sleeping on the waves, and never touching land until they return to breed. Their plumage dulls, their famous orange beak plates are shed and regrown, and their faces become darker and less recognizable. A winter puffin bobbing alone on the North Atlantic looks little like the colony-dwelling bird people photograph in summer.
This disappearing act is why puffin migration went essentially unstudied for so long. You cannot follow a bird across the open ocean by boat or telescope. It took the miniaturization of geolocators in the early 2000s to crack the question open, and every year of new data reveals more complexity. The picture that has emerged is of a species whose migration is far more individually variable, more energetically demanding, and more tied to ocean conditions than anyone expected. Each puffin is, in a sense, running its own experiment in where and how to survive the winter, and repeating the strategy that worked until it does not.