Have you ever seen a puffin? With their bright beaks, orange feet and black and white coloring, these birds are very cool to look at. And we’ve gotten a lot of questions about them! In this episode, we talk with Don Lyons, an educator and avian ecologist with the Seabird Institute in Maine. What are puffins? Why are puffin beaks so colorful? Why do puffins dig burrows? How do puffins learn to fly? How can you tell if a puffin is male or female? How long can puffins hold their breath? Why do they have red feet?
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- Puffins are seabirds. They spend most of their time out to sea, diving for fish and bobbing on the water. They can fly very fast as well, but they only come on land for a few months of the year, when it’s time to nest and have babies.
- There are four different types of puffins. And they all live in the Northern Hemisphere. Three types live in the northern Pacific Ocean: the horned puffin, the tufted puffin, and the rhinoceros auklet. The most well-known puffins, Atlantic Puffins, live in the north Atlantic Ocean.
- Atlantic Puffins have black backs and white fronts. The top of their heads are black and they have big white cheek patches. They have really bright orange feet, an orange and black triangle over their eyes and beautiful black, orange and white beaks. Sometimes these birds are called the parrots or the clowns of the sea!
- When Atlantic puffins are young, their beaks are grayish black. As they get older, their beak becomes thicker and more colorful.
- It takes several years for a puffin to be old enough to mate and have babies. Until then, they mostly stay out at sea. Sometimes they swim around a colony when older puffins are nesting, to see if it might be a good place for them to nest when they’re mature.
- Once a puffin has reached maturity, it usually returns to the nesting colony where it was born. It finds a mate, which it will then nest with for many years (sometimes the rest of its life).
- Puffins dig burrows into the side of a cliff or create one in the crevasse of rocks. The burrow protects the chicks from predators.
- Puffins lay one egg each year, and both parents take care of the egg and the chick, called a puffling, until it’s time for the whole family to leave the colony.
- When pufflings first learn to fly, they launch themselves off the cliff and have to learn to fly before they hit the water! This is usually done at night to avoid predators.
- In the Westman Islands in Iceland, where the world’s largest colony of Atlantic puffins breeds, people sometimes find disoriented young puffins that didn’t quite get it right on their first flight. Helpful volunteers keep the pufflings safe until nighttime and then give them a helpful toss into the water.
- Male and female puffins look identical. Scientists tell them apart by taking DNA samples.
- Puffins don’t usually dive deeper than 50 feet, but they are capable of diving 200 feet into the water. They can hold their breath for 2-3 minutes.
- Puffins eat fish, and can hold many small fish in their beaks at one time. The record is over 60 fish!
