Puffins are captivating seabirds, recognized for their striking appearance and unique behaviors. They spend most of their lives at sea, returning to land primarily for breeding during the warmer months. Their presence on coastal cliffs transforms these landscapes into bustling colonies, offering a fascinating glimpse into an avian life adapted to both marine and terrestrial environments.
Distinctive Traits
Puffins belong to the auk family, Alcidae, which also includes guillemots and razorbills. They are stocky, short-winged birds with black upper parts and white underparts. The Atlantic puffin, for instance, typically measures around 28 to 30 cm in length with a wingspan of 47 to 63 cm. Their distinctive appearance, especially their large, colorful bill, earns them nicknames like “clown of the sea” or “sea parrot.”
During the breeding season, their bill becomes brightly colored with shades of red, orange, yellow, and even blue at the base. This vibrant coloration, which also extends to their bright orange legs and feet, plays a role in attracting mates. After the breeding season, the colorful outer plates of their bill are shed, revealing a smaller, duller beak for the winter months.
Puffins possess remarkable adaptations for both flight and diving. They are agile flyers, flapping their small wings rapidly at up to 400 beats per minute to maintain flight. Underwater, these same wings become powerful flippers, propelling them through the water as they “fly” in pursuit of prey. Their webbed feet further aid in steering and maneuverability while swimming.
Where Puffins Live and What They Eat
The Atlantic puffin, Fratercula arctica, inhabits the colder waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, breeding on coasts and islands from eastern North America to northwest Europe, including Iceland, Norway, and the British Isles. Iceland alone is home to a significant portion of the world’s Atlantic puffins, with the largest colony found in the Westman Islands. Other species, like the tufted and horned puffins, are found in the North Pacific.
Their diet primarily consists of small marine fish, such as sand eels, herring, capelin, and hake, typically measuring 2 to 6 inches long. Puffins are pursuit divers, using their wings to propel themselves underwater to depths of up to 60 meters (200 feet) while hunting. They can hold multiple fish crosswise in their bill at once, thanks to backward-pointing spines on their tongue and the roof of their mouth, allowing them to carry around 10 fish on average, with records up to 62.
While breeding, they forage in shallow waters close to their colonies, usually within 10 miles of shore. Outside the breeding season, puffins range widely across the North Atlantic, sometimes venturing as far south as the Mediterranean Sea or North Carolina during winter. During these months, their diet may also include crustaceans and mollusks.
Breeding and Species Status
Puffins return to coastal areas in late spring for the breeding season, typically from April to August. They form large colonies on cliffs and islands, often exhibiting strong nest-site fidelity by returning to the same burrow year after year. Puffins are generally monogamous, with pairs often reuniting at their breeding grounds each spring.
Nests are typically burrows dug into soft soil or turf on grassy slopes, sometimes up to 2.75 meters (9 feet) long. They may also use rock crevices or natural hollows. Both sexes participate in digging the burrow and lining it with grass and other materials. A single white egg is laid, and both parents share incubation duties for approximately 36 to 45 days. The chick, known as a “puffling,” is fed fish by its parents for about 38 to 45 days until it is ready to fledge.
The Atlantic puffin has a wide range and a large population, yet its conservation status is listed as “Vulnerable” by the IUCN. Their numbers have declined rapidly in some areas due to factors like changes in food supplies from warming ocean waters and historical exploitation.