Birds
Atlantic Puffin
Fratercula arctica · also called common puffin, sea parrot, clown of the sea
The Atlantic puffin is one of the most recognisable seabirds in the world — a stocky black-and-white bird with a clownish painted bill, standing on a green clifftop. That familiar image is only three months of its year; for the rest of it the puffin is a solitary speck bobbing on the open North Atlantic.
Overview
Atlantic puffins breed in colonies on grassy cliff slopes and islands around the northern Atlantic, gathering from late spring to mid-summer to dig burrows and raise a single chick. Once the young bird leaves, the colony empties and the adults disperse across the ocean, ranging widely and alone, resting on the water and diving for food, not touching land again until the next breeding season.
Built to fly through water
The puffin belongs to the auk family, the northern hemisphere’s ecological answer to penguins. Unlike penguins it has kept the power of flight, but its wings are a dual-purpose tool: short and stiff for beating fast in air, and equally used to “fly” underwater in pursuit of fish, propelling the bird to depths of 30 to 60 metres. On land the same body plan makes it an upright, shuffling walker.
Feeding
Puffins hunt small schooling fish — sand eels above all, plus herring, sprat, and capelin — caught one at a time on repeated underwater passes. The specialised bill lets a puffin keep its catch pinned while grabbing more, so it can bring a beakful of fish back to the burrow for its chick rather than a single fish per trip. Gulls and skuas often ambush returning puffins to rob them, a behaviour called kleptoparasitism.
Reproduction
Puffins are long-lived and mate with the same partner year after year, returning to the same burrow. The pair digs or refurbishes a tunnel a metre or two long, and the female lays a single egg. Both parents incubate it and then ferry fish to the chick, the “puffling,” for about six weeks. The chick then leaves the burrow at night, alone, and flutters down to the sea, where it must fend for itself immediately. In parts of Iceland, local children run “puffling patrols” to rescue chicks that get disoriented by town lights and release them at the shore.
Threats and conservation
The Atlantic puffin is listed as Vulnerable, with large declines in its European heartland driven mainly by food shortages as the small fish it depends on are affected by warming water and fishing. Oil pollution, invasive predators on nesting islands, severe winter storms (“wrecks” that wash thousands of dead puffins ashore), and drowning in nets add further pressure. Conservation work includes eradicating rats and mink from breeding islands, establishing new colonies with decoys and recordings, and protecting forage-fish stocks.
Atlantic Puffin: common questions
Can puffins fly?
Yes — unlike penguins, puffins fly well in the air, whirring their small wings up to 400 times a minute to reach about 80 km/h. But those same short wings are also built for underwater "flight" — a puffin flaps to propel itself down as deep as 60 metres and uses its feet to steer while chasing fish. It is a compromise design that works in both media but excels at neither.
How do puffins carry so many fish at once?
A puffin's bill has a hinge that lets the upper and lower parts stay roughly parallel when open, and the tongue can press a fish against backward-pointing spines on the roof of the mouth. That lets the bird hold caught fish in place while opening its bill to grab more, stacking them crosswise. A typical bill-load is about ten small fish; the record is 62.
Why is the puffin's beak so colourful?
The vivid orange, red, and blue is a breeding-season signal. The outer horny plates of the bill grow in spring, are used in courtship and in judging rivals, and are shed after breeding, leaving a smaller, duller grey-brown bill for the winter at sea. The bright plates also fluoresce under ultraviolet light, which puffins can see and people cannot.
Why are puffin numbers falling?
Mainly a shortage of the small fish they feed their chicks. Warming seas and industrial fishing have reduced or shifted stocks of sand eels and other forage fish in parts of the North Atlantic, so chicks starve in the burrow. Puffins are also hit by oil spills, invasive rats and mink on breeding islands, extreme storms, and plastic and bycatch. Iceland and Norway, which hold most of the world's puffins, have seen steep declines.