Atlantic puffin

Name and taxonomy

The scientific name of the Atlantic puffin is Fratercula arctica. Fratercula is medieval Latin for little friar, a nod to the black and white plumage. The second word points north, from the Greek word for bear and the Great Bear constellation. The English word puffin first belonged to the cured meat of young Manx shearwaters. Pennant applied it to this bird in 1768, probably because both species nest in burrows. The species is also called the common puffin.

Three subspecies are usually recognised, and they differ only in size. Body, wing and bill all grow larger towards the north. A bird from northern Iceland weighs about 650 grams, and one from the Faroes about 400 g. Ernst Mayr argued that the change is gradual and that no subspecies should be named.

Evolution and relatives

The puffin belongs to Alcidae, the auk family, in the order Charadriiformes. Guillemots, murrelets, auklets and the razorbill are its cousins. Two more puffins live in the northeast Pacific, the tufted and the horned. The horned puffin is the closest relative of the Atlantic bird. The puffins and the rhinoceros auklet form one group inside the family.

Auks use the same wing for flying and for swimming, so the wing is a compromise. Its surface is small for the bird's weight, which forces a very fast wingbeat. Like other auks, the puffin stands upright on land with its legs set far back. That build probably works well in water and poorly on a flat surface.

Appearance

The crown, nape, back, wings and tail are glossy black, and a black collar rings the throat. The breast and belly are white, and a pale grey lozenge covers each side of the face. The bird is 28 to 30 cm long and weighs 400 to 650 g depending on where it lives. Its wingspan is 47 to 63 cm, and it stands about 20 cm tall. Blue-grey horny skin above and below the eye makes the eye look triangular. A red ring circles each brown or dark blue iris.

The summer bill is the famous part, broad and bright in red, orange and grey. It deepens and curves with age, and old birds may show grooves on the red section. After breeding the bird sheds the coloured plates and the eye ornaments. The winter face is darker and the bill is narrower and duller. People rarely see that plumage, because the birds are then far out at sea. A juvenile has a dark face, a narrow grey bill and dark legs.

Habitat and range

The puffin breeds around the North Atlantic, from Arctic coasts to France and Maine. Colonies sit in Iceland, Norway, the Faroes, Britain, Ireland, Greenland and Newfoundland. Iceland alone holds about 60% of the world population. Witless Bay in Newfoundland holds the largest western colony, at more than 260,000 pairs. Islands are favoured over the mainland, most likely because they carry no ground predators.

Outside the breeding season the bird lives on the open sea. It may reach the Arctic Circle in summer and the Mediterranean in winter. One tracked bird from Maine covered 7,700 kilometres of ocean in 8 months. The wintering range is so wide that each bird has more than 1 square kilometre to itself. Nesting ground is a grassy slope just above a cliff edge, where take-off is easiest. A burrow runs about 70 to 110 cm into the soil.

Diet and feeding

The diet is almost all fish, with some shrimp, molluscs and marine worms. Sand eels, herring, capelin and sprats are the usual catch. The bird can swallow a shallow-bodied fish up to 18 cm long, but takes prey nearer 7 cm. An adult needs roughly 40 small fish a day. It hunts by sight and can stay under for up to a minute.

Underwater the puffin half-opens its wings and rows, steering with its feet. It swallows small prey below the surface and brings larger fish up. The two halves of the bill can be held parallel, so a row of fish lies crosswise in it. A grooved tongue and inward-facing serrations stop the catch slipping out. Salt glands in the nostrils remove the sea water the bird swallows. Feeding trips can run 100 km offshore, and about half that when there is a chick to feed.

Behaviour and social life

At sea the puffin lives alone and rides the waves facing into the wind. It preens for long periods and spreads oil from its preen gland over the feathers. The dry down beneath keeps the bird warm in cold water. A dark back and pale belly hide it from hunters above and below. The bird moults at sea between January and March and loses all its flight feathers at once. It cannot fly for a month or two while the new feathers grow.

On land the same bird is highly social and nests in packed colonies. Arriving birds circle the slope several times and avoid landing where no puffin stands. A dominant bird walks slowly with its chest fluffed, its tail cocked and its bill gaping. A submissive bird lowers its head, holds level and hurries past. If one bird is startled, the whole colony may lift and wheel around together. Colonies are busiest in the evening, then empty as the birds fly out to roost at sea.

Communication and senses

The puffin is nearly silent at sea, except for a soft purring in flight. Above ground in the colony it is quiet as well. Inside the burrow it gives a deep growl, which people compare to a small engine. The call is used mostly in the breeding season.

Posture appears to do most of the talking in a colony. Billing, in which a pair wags their heads and rattles their bills together, renews the bond. Pairs keep billing at a lower rate through the whole season. A bird signals a take-off by dipping its body before it runs downhill. Both sexes see colour, so the bright bill is probably a signal about quality. Puffins also dip their heads under water to look around for predators.

Reproduction and life cycle

Birds first breed at about five years old, and the range runs from 3 to 6. They return to the colony where they hatched and often to the very same burrow. Pairs stay together year after year, though loyalty to the site may drive that more than loyalty to the mate. One bird digs while the other stands outside and takes a shower of soil. Some pairs line the chamber with dry grass, and others leave it bare.

The female lays a single white egg, in April in the south and rarely before June in Greenland. The egg averages 61 millimetres long and 42 mm wide and weighs about 62 g. Both parents incubate it with two bare brood patches for 39 to 45 days. The chick hatches at about 42 g, with open eyes and the ability to stand. It gains around 10 g a day on whole fish dropped beside it in the burrow.

Fledging takes 34 to 50 days, and 38 to 44 days is the usual span. By then the chick weighs about 75% of an adult and has shed its black down. It leaves at night, walks and flaps its way down to the water and paddles offshore. By dawn it may be 3 km out, and it will not touch land again for two or three years. Wild birds usually live 15 to 23 years, and a ringed bird reached at least 45.

Predators and threats

Great black-backed gulls and great skuas take adults in the air or on the ground. Smaller gulls cannot kill a healthy adult, so they steal eggs, small chicks and fish instead. Arctic skuas chase returning birds until they drop the load meant for a chick. Seals and large fish catch puffins at sea. A caught bird fights back hard with its bill and claws.

Rats, cats, dogs, foxes, stoats and weasels wipe out colonies on islands where they land. On Lundy the population fell from 3,500 pairs in 1939 to 10 pairs in 2000 because of rats. Oil spills soak the plumage, and a soaked bird loses insulation and swallows toxins as it preens. Plastic in the sea kills birds too, and mercury and arsenic build up through the fish they eat. Ticks, fleas and feather mites live in the burrows.

Population and conservation

The IUCN listed the puffin as Vulnerable in 2015 after a review of the European trend. Europe holds 4,770,000 to 5,780,000 pairs, which is over 90% of the world total. A 2018 estimate put the global figure at 12 to 14 million adults. Numbers have fallen sharply since 2000 in Iceland, Norway, the Faroes and Greenland. One projection has the European population dropping by 50 to 79% between 2000 and 2065.

Food supply seems to drive most of the change. Sand eels make up at least 90% of chick food in Shetland, and chicks starve in poor sand eel years. Warmer water has moved herring away from Maine, and adults there have starved. Some colonies are growing, and Skomer in Wales now holds more than 43,000 birds. Removing rats from an island is probably the clearest way to help. The Scottish project SOS Puffin cuts back tree mallow on Craigleith so birds can burrow again.

Relationship with humans

People ate puffins for centuries, fresh, salted or smoked, and used the feathers in bedding. In the Faroes hunters used the fleyg, a pole 3.6 metres long carrying a small net. A skilled hunter could scoop 200 to 300 birds from the air in a day. On St Kilda a noose on a flexible pole was slipped over a curious bird. Most countries now protect the species, and Iceland and the Faroes limit the hunt by law.

Watching puffins probably earns more now than eating them ever did. Boat tours run in Maine, Iceland, the Hebrides and Newfoundland every summer. Project Puffin, begun in 1973, moved 954 chicks to Eastern Egg Rock in Maine. Decoys, mirrors and recorded calls convinced the first returning adults to stay. By 2014 the island held 148 nesting pairs, on ground the birds had left in 1885.

In culture and myth

The puffin is the official bird of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada. Vaeroy in Norway carries a puffin on its coat of arms. Nicknames include clown of the sea and sea parrot, and a chick is a puffling. The island of Lundy takes its name from the Old Norse word lundi, meaning puffin. Its owner issued Half Puffin and One Puffin coins in 1929 and was fined for it.

On the Icelandic island of Heimaey children gather lost pufflings and carry them to the sea. The fledglings get confused by street lights on their first walk down to the water. A photographic children's book recorded that tradition in 1995.

Puffin Books took the bird's name for its children's list in 1939. Many countries have put the bird on postage stamps. The porgs of the Star Wars films grew out of puffins the crew could not remove from shot. The bird is protected on Skellig Michael, so the film makers covered it digitally instead.