Puffins
The (Atlantic) Puffin is a species of seabird in the auk family which also includes the guillemots, murrelets, auklets and the Razorbill. It is the only puffin species native to the Atlantic Ocean. Two related species, the Tufted Puffin and the Horned Puffin, are found in the north eastern Pacific Ocean.
The scientific name Fratercula comes from the Medieval Latin fratercula meaning friar and a reference to the black and white plumage which resembles monastic robes. The specific name arctica refers to the northerly distribution of the bird and is derived from the Greek άρκτος ("arktos") meaning bear and referring to the northerly constellation of the Great Bear. The vernacular name puffin (puffed in the sense of swollen) was originally applied to the fatty, salted meat of young birds of the unrelated species Manx Shearwater which was known as the "Manks puffin". It is an Anglo-Norman word (Middle English pophyn or poffin) used for the cured carcasses. The Puffin acquired the name at a much later stage, possibly because of its similar nesting habits and it was formally applied to the species in 1768.
The Puffin is sturdily built with a thick-set neck and short wings and tail. It is 11 to 12 inches in length from the tip of its stout bill to its blunt-ended tail. Its wingspan is 19 to 25 inches and on land it stands about 8 inches high. The male is generally slightly larger than the female but they are coloured alike. The forehead, crown and nape are glossy black, as are the back, wings and tail. A broad black collar extends around the neck and throat. On each side of the head is a large, lozenge-shaped area of very pale grey. These face patches taper to a point and nearly meet at the back of the neck. The shape of the head creates a crease extending from the eye to the hindmost point of each patch giving the appearance of a grey streak. The eye looks almost triangular in shape because of a small, peaked area of horny blue-grey skin above it and a rectangular patch below. The irises are brown or very dark blue and each has red orbital ring. The underparts of the Puffin and its breast, belly and undertail coverts are white. By the end of the breeding season, the black plumage may have lost its shine or even taken on a slightly brownish tinge. The legs are short and set well back on the body giving the Puffin its upright stance on land. Both legs and large webbed feet are bright orange, contrasting with the sharp black claws.
The Puffin’s beak is very distinctive. From the side, the beak is broad and triangular but viewed from above it is narrow. The half nearest the tip is orange-red and the half nearest to the head is slate grey. There is a yellow chevron-shaped ridge separating the two parts and a yellow, fleshy strip at the base of the bill. At the joint of the two mandibles there is a yellow and wrinkled rosette. The exact proportions of the beak vary with the age of the Puffin. In an immature Puffin, the beak has reached its full length but it is not as broad as that of an adult. With time the bill deepens, the upper edge curves and a kink develops at its base. As the Puffin ages, one or more grooves may form on the red portion. The Puffin has a powerful bite.
The characteristic bright orange bill plates and other facial characteristics of the Puffin develop in the spring. At the close of the breeding season, these special coatings and appendages are shed in a partial moult. This makes the beak appear less broad, the tip less bright and the base darker grey. The eye ornaments are shed and the eyes appear round. At the same time, the feathers of the head and neck are replaced and the face becomes darker. This winter plumage is seldom seen by humans because when they have left their chicks, Puffins head out to sea and do not return to land until the next breeding season. The juvenile Puffin is similar to the adult in plumage but altogether duller with a much darker grey face and yellowish-brown beak tip and legs. After fledging, it will make its way to the water and will head out to sea and not return to land for several years. In the interim period, each year it will have a broader bill, paler face patches and brighter legs and beak.
The striking appearance, large colourful bill, waddling gait and behaviour of the Puffin have given rise to nicknames such as "clown of the sea" and "sea parrot". It is the official bird symbol for the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Puffin has a direct flight, typically 30 feet above the surface of the sea and higher over the water than most other auks. It mostly moves by paddling along efficiently with its webbed feet and it seldom takes to the air. It is typically silent at sea except for the soft purring sounds it sometimes makes in flight. At the breeding colony it is quiet above ground but in its burrow makes a growling sound.
The Puffin is a bird of the colder waters of the north Atlantic Ocean. It breeds on the coasts of north west Europe, the Arctic fringes and eastern north America. The largest colony is on Iceland where 60% of the world's Puffins nest. Other major breeding locations include the north and west coasts of Norway, the Faroe Islands, the Shetland and Orkney islands in Scotland, the west coast of Greenland and the coasts of Newfoundland. Smaller sized colonies are also found elsewhere in the UK, the Murmansk area of Russia, Novaya Zemlya, Spitzbergen, Labrador, Nova Scotia and Maine. Islands seem particularly attractive to Puffins for breeding compared to mainland sites. While at sea, the Puffin ranges widely across the north Atlantic Ocean, including the North Sea, and it may enter the Arctic Circle. In the summer, the Puffin's southern limit stretches from northern France to Maine in the USA and in winter it may range as far south as the Mediterranean Sea and North Carolina in the USA.
The Puffin’s diet consists almost entirely of fish although it occasionally eats shrimps, other crustaceans and molluscs. When fishing, it swims underwater using its semi-extended wings as paddles to "fly" through the water and its feet as a rudder. It swims fast and can reach considerable depths and stay submerged for up to a minute. It fishes by sight and can swallow small fish while submerged but larger specimens are brought to the surface. It can catch several small fish in a single dive, holding the first ones in place in its beak with its muscular, grooved tongue while it catches others. The mandibles are hinged in such a way that they can be held parallel to hold a row of fish in place and these are also retained by inward-facing serrations on the edges of the beak.
Like many seabirds, the Puffin spends most of the year far from land in the open ocean and only visits coastal areas to breed. It is a sociable bird and it usually breeds in large colonies. The Puffin leads a solitary existence when out at sea and this part of their life has been little studied as the task of finding even one bird on the vast ocean is formidable.
Spending the autumn and winter in the open ocean of the cold northern seas, mature Puffins return to land in spring, usually to the colony at which they were hatched. Puffins that have been removed as chicks and released elsewhere have been found to show fidelity to their point of liberation. Puffins congregate for a few days on the sea in small groups offshore before returning to the cliff top nesting sites. Each large Puffin colony is subdivided into sub-colonies by physical boundaries such as stands of bracken or gorse. Early arrivals take control of the best locations, the most desirable nesting sites being the densely packed burrows on grassy slopes just above the cliff edge where take-off is most easily accomplished.
Puffin are usually monogamous but this is the result of their fidelity to their nesting sites rather than to their mates and they often return to the same burrow year after year. Later arrivals at the colony may find that all the best nesting sites have already been taken and be pushed towards the periphery where they are in greater danger of predation. Younger birds may come ashore a month or more after the mature birds and find no remaining nesting sites and will therefore not breed until the following year.
The Puffin is an energetic burrow engineer and repairer and the grassy slopes may be undermined by a network of tunnels. This causes the turf to dry out in summer, vegetation to die and dry soil be blown away by the wind. Burrows sometimes collapse and humans may cause this to happen by walking incautiously across nesting slopes.
Having spent the winter alone on the ocean, it is unclear whether the Puffin meets its previous partner offshore or whether they encounter each other when they return to their nest of the previous year. On land, they soon set about improving and clearing out the burrow. Often one stands outside the entrance while the other excavates, kicking out quantities of soil and grit that showers the partner standing outside. Some birds collect stems and fragments of dry grasses as nesting materials but others do not bother. Sometimes a beakful of materials is taken underground, only to be brought out again and discarded. Apart from nest-building, the other way in which the birds restore their bond is by billing. This is a practice in which the pair approach each other, each wagging its head from side to side and then rattling their beaks together. This seems to be an important element of their courtship behaviour because it happens repeatedly and the birds continue to bill, to a lesser extent, throughout the breeding season.
The Puffin is sexually mature at the age of 4 to 5 years. It is a colonial nester, excavating a burrow on grassy clifftops or reusing an existing burrow. It may also occasionally nest in crevices and amongst rocks and scree. It is in competition with other birds and animals for burrows. It can excavate its own burrow or move into a pre-existing burrow dug by a rabbit and it has been known to peck and drive off the original occupant.
The Puffin is monogamous and gives biparental care to its young. The male spends more time guarding and maintaining the nest while the female is more involved in incubation and feeding the chick.
Egg laying starts in April in more southerly colonies but seldom occurs before June in the far north in Greenland. The female Puffin lays a single white egg each year but if this is lost early in the breeding season another might be produced. The incubation responsibilities are shared by both parents.
Total incubation time is around 39 to 45 days. From above ground level, the first evidence that hatching has taken place is the arrival of an adult Puffin with a beak load of fish. For the first few days the chick may be fed with these beak-to-beak but later the fish are simply dropped on the floor of the nest beside the chick which swallows them whole. The chick is covered in fluffy black down and its eyes are open and it can stand as soon as it is hatched.
The chicks take from 34 to 50 days to fledge, the period depending on the abundance of their food supply. In years of fish shortage, the whole colony may experience a longer fledgling period but the normal range is 38 to 44 days, by which time chicks will have reached about 75% of their mature body weight. Although the supply of fish by the adults reduces over the last few days spent in the nest, the chick is not abandoned as happens with the Manx Shearwater. During the last few days underground, the chick sheds its down and the juvenile plumage is revealed. The chick finally leaves its nest at night when the risk of predation is at its lowest. When the moment arrives, it emerges from the burrow and walks, runs and flaps its way to the sea. At this time it can not fly properly so descending a cliff is perilous. When it reaches the water it paddles out to sea. It does not congregate with others of its kind and will not return to land for 2 or 3 years.
The Puffin is probably safest when out at sea. However, seals have been known to kill Puffins and large fish may also do so. Most Puffin colonies are on small islands and this is no coincidence as it avoids predation by ground-based mammals such as foxes, rats, stoats and weasels, cats and dogs. Aerial predators of the Puffin include the Great Black-backed Gull, the Great Skua and similar-sized species which can catch a bird in flight or attack one that is unable to escape fast enough on the ground. On detecting danger, Puffins take off and fly down to the safety of the sea or retreat into their burrows but if caught they defend themselves vigorously with beak and sharp claws. Smaller gull species like the Herring Gull and the Lesser Black-backed Gull are hardly able to bring down a healthy adult Puffin but instead they move through the colony taking any eggs that have rolled towards burrow entrances or recently hatched chicks that have ventured too far towards the daylight. They will also steal fish from Puffins returning to feed their young.
In its Red List of Threatened Species, the IUCN lists the Puffin as being of "least concern" since it has a very large total population and an extensive range. Although the number of Puffins seems to be decreasing, the decline does not reach the threshold for "vulnerable" status. Some of the causes of population decline may be increased predation by gulls and skuas, the introduction of rats, cats, dogs and foxes onto some islands used for nesting, oil spills and other pollution, contamination by toxic residues, drowning in fishing nets, declining food supplies and global warming and climate change.
Date: 4th July 2021
Location: RSPB Bempton Cliffs, East Yorkshire
The scientific name Fratercula comes from the Medieval Latin fratercula meaning friar and a reference to the black and white plumage which resembles monastic robes. The specific name arctica refers to the northerly distribution of the bird and is derived from the Greek άρκτος ("arktos") meaning bear and referring to the northerly constellation of the Great Bear. The vernacular name puffin (puffed in the sense of swollen) was originally applied to the fatty, salted meat of young birds of the unrelated species Manx Shearwater which was known as the "Manks puffin". It is an Anglo-Norman word (Middle English pophyn or poffin) used for the cured carcasses. The Puffin acquired the name at a much later stage, possibly because of its similar nesting habits and it was formally applied to the species in 1768.
The Puffin is sturdily built with a thick-set neck and short wings and tail. It is 11 to 12 inches in length from the tip of its stout bill to its blunt-ended tail. Its wingspan is 19 to 25 inches and on land it stands about 8 inches high. The male is generally slightly larger than the female but they are coloured alike. The forehead, crown and nape are glossy black, as are the back, wings and tail. A broad black collar extends around the neck and throat. On each side of the head is a large, lozenge-shaped area of very pale grey. These face patches taper to a point and nearly meet at the back of the neck. The shape of the head creates a crease extending from the eye to the hindmost point of each patch giving the appearance of a grey streak. The eye looks almost triangular in shape because of a small, peaked area of horny blue-grey skin above it and a rectangular patch below. The irises are brown or very dark blue and each has red orbital ring. The underparts of the Puffin and its breast, belly and undertail coverts are white. By the end of the breeding season, the black plumage may have lost its shine or even taken on a slightly brownish tinge. The legs are short and set well back on the body giving the Puffin its upright stance on land. Both legs and large webbed feet are bright orange, contrasting with the sharp black claws.
The Puffin’s beak is very distinctive. From the side, the beak is broad and triangular but viewed from above it is narrow. The half nearest the tip is orange-red and the half nearest to the head is slate grey. There is a yellow chevron-shaped ridge separating the two parts and a yellow, fleshy strip at the base of the bill. At the joint of the two mandibles there is a yellow and wrinkled rosette. The exact proportions of the beak vary with the age of the Puffin. In an immature Puffin, the beak has reached its full length but it is not as broad as that of an adult. With time the bill deepens, the upper edge curves and a kink develops at its base. As the Puffin ages, one or more grooves may form on the red portion. The Puffin has a powerful bite.
The characteristic bright orange bill plates and other facial characteristics of the Puffin develop in the spring. At the close of the breeding season, these special coatings and appendages are shed in a partial moult. This makes the beak appear less broad, the tip less bright and the base darker grey. The eye ornaments are shed and the eyes appear round. At the same time, the feathers of the head and neck are replaced and the face becomes darker. This winter plumage is seldom seen by humans because when they have left their chicks, Puffins head out to sea and do not return to land until the next breeding season. The juvenile Puffin is similar to the adult in plumage but altogether duller with a much darker grey face and yellowish-brown beak tip and legs. After fledging, it will make its way to the water and will head out to sea and not return to land for several years. In the interim period, each year it will have a broader bill, paler face patches and brighter legs and beak.
The striking appearance, large colourful bill, waddling gait and behaviour of the Puffin have given rise to nicknames such as "clown of the sea" and "sea parrot". It is the official bird symbol for the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Puffin has a direct flight, typically 30 feet above the surface of the sea and higher over the water than most other auks. It mostly moves by paddling along efficiently with its webbed feet and it seldom takes to the air. It is typically silent at sea except for the soft purring sounds it sometimes makes in flight. At the breeding colony it is quiet above ground but in its burrow makes a growling sound.
The Puffin is a bird of the colder waters of the north Atlantic Ocean. It breeds on the coasts of north west Europe, the Arctic fringes and eastern north America. The largest colony is on Iceland where 60% of the world's Puffins nest. Other major breeding locations include the north and west coasts of Norway, the Faroe Islands, the Shetland and Orkney islands in Scotland, the west coast of Greenland and the coasts of Newfoundland. Smaller sized colonies are also found elsewhere in the UK, the Murmansk area of Russia, Novaya Zemlya, Spitzbergen, Labrador, Nova Scotia and Maine. Islands seem particularly attractive to Puffins for breeding compared to mainland sites. While at sea, the Puffin ranges widely across the north Atlantic Ocean, including the North Sea, and it may enter the Arctic Circle. In the summer, the Puffin's southern limit stretches from northern France to Maine in the USA and in winter it may range as far south as the Mediterranean Sea and North Carolina in the USA.
The Puffin’s diet consists almost entirely of fish although it occasionally eats shrimps, other crustaceans and molluscs. When fishing, it swims underwater using its semi-extended wings as paddles to "fly" through the water and its feet as a rudder. It swims fast and can reach considerable depths and stay submerged for up to a minute. It fishes by sight and can swallow small fish while submerged but larger specimens are brought to the surface. It can catch several small fish in a single dive, holding the first ones in place in its beak with its muscular, grooved tongue while it catches others. The mandibles are hinged in such a way that they can be held parallel to hold a row of fish in place and these are also retained by inward-facing serrations on the edges of the beak.
Like many seabirds, the Puffin spends most of the year far from land in the open ocean and only visits coastal areas to breed. It is a sociable bird and it usually breeds in large colonies. The Puffin leads a solitary existence when out at sea and this part of their life has been little studied as the task of finding even one bird on the vast ocean is formidable.
Spending the autumn and winter in the open ocean of the cold northern seas, mature Puffins return to land in spring, usually to the colony at which they were hatched. Puffins that have been removed as chicks and released elsewhere have been found to show fidelity to their point of liberation. Puffins congregate for a few days on the sea in small groups offshore before returning to the cliff top nesting sites. Each large Puffin colony is subdivided into sub-colonies by physical boundaries such as stands of bracken or gorse. Early arrivals take control of the best locations, the most desirable nesting sites being the densely packed burrows on grassy slopes just above the cliff edge where take-off is most easily accomplished.
Puffin are usually monogamous but this is the result of their fidelity to their nesting sites rather than to their mates and they often return to the same burrow year after year. Later arrivals at the colony may find that all the best nesting sites have already been taken and be pushed towards the periphery where they are in greater danger of predation. Younger birds may come ashore a month or more after the mature birds and find no remaining nesting sites and will therefore not breed until the following year.
The Puffin is an energetic burrow engineer and repairer and the grassy slopes may be undermined by a network of tunnels. This causes the turf to dry out in summer, vegetation to die and dry soil be blown away by the wind. Burrows sometimes collapse and humans may cause this to happen by walking incautiously across nesting slopes.
Having spent the winter alone on the ocean, it is unclear whether the Puffin meets its previous partner offshore or whether they encounter each other when they return to their nest of the previous year. On land, they soon set about improving and clearing out the burrow. Often one stands outside the entrance while the other excavates, kicking out quantities of soil and grit that showers the partner standing outside. Some birds collect stems and fragments of dry grasses as nesting materials but others do not bother. Sometimes a beakful of materials is taken underground, only to be brought out again and discarded. Apart from nest-building, the other way in which the birds restore their bond is by billing. This is a practice in which the pair approach each other, each wagging its head from side to side and then rattling their beaks together. This seems to be an important element of their courtship behaviour because it happens repeatedly and the birds continue to bill, to a lesser extent, throughout the breeding season.
The Puffin is sexually mature at the age of 4 to 5 years. It is a colonial nester, excavating a burrow on grassy clifftops or reusing an existing burrow. It may also occasionally nest in crevices and amongst rocks and scree. It is in competition with other birds and animals for burrows. It can excavate its own burrow or move into a pre-existing burrow dug by a rabbit and it has been known to peck and drive off the original occupant.
The Puffin is monogamous and gives biparental care to its young. The male spends more time guarding and maintaining the nest while the female is more involved in incubation and feeding the chick.
Egg laying starts in April in more southerly colonies but seldom occurs before June in the far north in Greenland. The female Puffin lays a single white egg each year but if this is lost early in the breeding season another might be produced. The incubation responsibilities are shared by both parents.
Total incubation time is around 39 to 45 days. From above ground level, the first evidence that hatching has taken place is the arrival of an adult Puffin with a beak load of fish. For the first few days the chick may be fed with these beak-to-beak but later the fish are simply dropped on the floor of the nest beside the chick which swallows them whole. The chick is covered in fluffy black down and its eyes are open and it can stand as soon as it is hatched.
The chicks take from 34 to 50 days to fledge, the period depending on the abundance of their food supply. In years of fish shortage, the whole colony may experience a longer fledgling period but the normal range is 38 to 44 days, by which time chicks will have reached about 75% of their mature body weight. Although the supply of fish by the adults reduces over the last few days spent in the nest, the chick is not abandoned as happens with the Manx Shearwater. During the last few days underground, the chick sheds its down and the juvenile plumage is revealed. The chick finally leaves its nest at night when the risk of predation is at its lowest. When the moment arrives, it emerges from the burrow and walks, runs and flaps its way to the sea. At this time it can not fly properly so descending a cliff is perilous. When it reaches the water it paddles out to sea. It does not congregate with others of its kind and will not return to land for 2 or 3 years.
The Puffin is probably safest when out at sea. However, seals have been known to kill Puffins and large fish may also do so. Most Puffin colonies are on small islands and this is no coincidence as it avoids predation by ground-based mammals such as foxes, rats, stoats and weasels, cats and dogs. Aerial predators of the Puffin include the Great Black-backed Gull, the Great Skua and similar-sized species which can catch a bird in flight or attack one that is unable to escape fast enough on the ground. On detecting danger, Puffins take off and fly down to the safety of the sea or retreat into their burrows but if caught they defend themselves vigorously with beak and sharp claws. Smaller gull species like the Herring Gull and the Lesser Black-backed Gull are hardly able to bring down a healthy adult Puffin but instead they move through the colony taking any eggs that have rolled towards burrow entrances or recently hatched chicks that have ventured too far towards the daylight. They will also steal fish from Puffins returning to feed their young.
In its Red List of Threatened Species, the IUCN lists the Puffin as being of "least concern" since it has a very large total population and an extensive range. Although the number of Puffins seems to be decreasing, the decline does not reach the threshold for "vulnerable" status. Some of the causes of population decline may be increased predation by gulls and skuas, the introduction of rats, cats, dogs and foxes onto some islands used for nesting, oil spills and other pollution, contamination by toxic residues, drowning in fishing nets, declining food supplies and global warming and climate change.
Date: 4th July 2021
Location: RSPB Bempton Cliffs, East Yorkshire
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