NATIONAL WILDLIFE MAGAZINE Aug/Sep 1994,vol. 32 no. 5
The Puffins Keep Their Secrets By Les Line
These small seabirds delight human visitors to rocky islands in north seas, yet remain biological mysteries.
The lore of the Atlantic puffin, a species that ranks among everyone’s favorite seabirds, includes an enduring story about how parent birds starve their single nearly grown chicks until hunger motivates the youngsters to leave the security of clifftop burrows and, in the dark of night, leap to the pounding sea.
A famous Welsh birdman, Ronald Lockley, discovered this behavior in the 1930s while studying puffins on the island of Skokholm off Wales. When matchsticks that he lodged…
The Witless Bay Ecological Reserve contains four islands—Gull, Green, Great, and Pee Pee—that teem with bird life during the seabird breeding season.
The reserve contains North America’s largest Atlantic puffin colony. More than 260,000 pairs of the province’s official bird nest here during the late spring and summer.
In addition, black-legged kittiwakes and common murres appear in the thousands.
The islands lie just a few kilometres off the east coast of Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula, between the communities of Bay Bulls and Bauline East, half an hour south of St. John’s. The reserve area takes in 31 km2-29 km2 of this is a marine area around the islands. Regulations govern the operation of boats inside the reserve during the sensitive nesting season (April 1-September 1).
Seabirds generally spend most of the year at sea and only return to land from May to August to breed and raise their young. For the most part, public observation of their activities must be done from boats-landing on the islands themselves requires a scientific research or special access permit.
The Witless Bay Islands are part of the Maritime Barrens-Southeastern Barrens subregion (pdf). The Islands were originally designated a wildlife reserve in 1964. They became the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve in 1983, three years after the Wilderness and Ecological Reserves Act was passed.
This was just a sweet photograph. I love the color of the water and the position of the puffin. Puffins are excellent swimmers! Puffins can stay underwater up to a minute but generally they only stay under for 20 to 30 seconds. They sort of fly underwater which makes them swim pretty fast and makes up for their clumsy flying skills in the air. The puffin often crash lands when it is flying through the air but can reach speeds up to 55 mph. Luckily, their wings suit them well for the water and help them swim to catch up to 10 fish with every dip and allowing them to plunge up to 200 feet deep in one dive!
An Atlantic puffin on Maine's on Eastern Egg Rock appears to imitate a decoy on July 9 by standing on one leg. Decoys were used to lure the gregarious birds ashore after they were re-introduced to the island following a 100-year absence. Photo by Robert F. Bukaty / AP
Hunted to extinction in state, they’re thriving thanks to human help Puffins, which resemble half-pint penguins except that they can fly, were heavily hunted along the Maine coast for their meat and feathers, and by 1901 only one pair remained, researchers said. Puffins are often confused with penguins. They have similar colors, and both swim under water using their wings as fins, but they are not related and live at opposite polar ends of the world.
In 1973, with backing from the National Audubon Society and help from the Canadian Wildlife Service, Kress began transplanting 2-week-old puffin chicks from Great Island off Newfoundland, 1,000 miles to the northeast.
These days there are 90 nesting pairs on Eastern Egg, among more than 700 nesting pairs on four Maine islands, Kress said.
I never would have guessed that the three puffins were so different in size. It helped to see the difference in size—so I decided to make the graphic below so you could see for yourself.
Atlantic Puffins are about 10 to 11 1/2 inches (25-29 cm)
Horned Puffins are bigger by 5 inches — 15 inches tall (38 cm)
And the Tufted Puffins are the biggest puffins at 16 inches tall (44 cm)
I received the game yesterday and played it for a few hours straight. It was pretty fun, cute and informative. I learned a lot about puffins as well as about other animals near to the puffin. The graphics are not state-of-the-art but there is some good hand drawn art work throughout and some good photographs.
There are six main categories of fun to choose from:
Jigsaw Puzzle—Here you can put together pieces of a puzzle—always depicting puffins eventually. These puzzles can be as simple as 9 pieces or as complex as 100 pieces.
Storybook—Here you can read (and listen along) to a story about a man’s journey to see the Puffins. It has beautiful black-and-white hand drawn illustrations included.
Safari—Here you can choose easy, medium or hard options to go on a safari with Professor Eggwood where you look through binoculars at animals and choose which animal you are looking at from the four options provided. Each level ends with the choosing of a puffin. Here you learn to identify many different animals both in flight and standing still.
Slider Puzzle—Here you can slide tiles to get the picture perfect. You can choose 9 tiles to 36 tiles depending on your desired level of challenge. The pictures are nice to see after you slide the tiles into the correct place.
Match—Here you can match pictures, like the game of Memory, matching the pictures on the tiles. You turn one over and try to find (or remember its matchint tile). You can choose a game with 6 tiles or 48!!!
Videos—Here you can watch a documentary with our without a voice over — all about puffins.
This game is inexpensive but packed with tons of educational fun, cute games, hand drawn illustrations and hours of game-playing. I would definitely recommend getting this game for all ages.
Predators are a natural part of life. And while uber adorable puffins also have predators. Each puffin has its own set of predators.
What are the puffin predators? What preys on Puffins?
Predators of the Atlantic puffin include people; gulls and skuas including the Great Black-backed Gull, the Great Skua, the Herring Gull amongst others; rats; cats; dogs; and foxes. Puffins are also vulnerable to pollution, fishing nets, declining fish populations, and global warming.
Predators of the Tufted Puffins include people, unfortunately. Tufted Puffins have three major predators the Snowy Owl, Bald Eagles and Arctic Foxes. They are also vulnerable due to decreasing fish population, ocean pollution and oil spills.
Predators of the Horned Puffin include people as well. Horned Puffins also are preyed upon by gulls, foxes, larger predatory birds and rats. Traffic, oil spills, ocean pollution, over-fishing and the resulting declining fish population as well as global warming are also affecting their survival rate.
Puffins do have some unique abilities to protect themselves from predators. Their bill is very hard and colorful to warn other animals of the pain it can cause. For predators flying above puffins blend into the water while swimming which they do more often than not. This is due to their black backs, heads and sides. Underwater, the puffin also has an advantage. The underwater predators are fooled by the puffin’s white bellies mistaking them for glimpses of the sun.
It is all too simple to recognize the puffin, right? Distinct in shape and colorful beak.
Let’s look beyond the colorful beak and try to identify the puffin as a member of the Auk family. Auks are chubby little seabirds with the white and black patterns we have come to love and recognize in our puffins. Each species in the Auk family has its very own distinct black and white pattern.
When the auks are in the water you often cannot see their entire bodies. Often you cannot even see their beak very well with them diving and plunging so far from the shore. Let’s pay attention to the different patterns in the black and white on the Auks and learn to recognize the Puffin within some common Auks.
The Black Guillemot is mostly black with a little white streak—it has a completely black head and beak.
The Atlantic Puffin is black around the neck and in a slight cap with a white face and a colorful beak.
The Razorbill is black on the back except one line of white in the wings and white in the front like the puffin but it has a completely black face except one white streak along its beak—going down its bill from its eye and a white ring around the bill.
The Ancient Murrelet has a dark grayish black back and a mostly black head but the white comes up higher onto its neck and the tip of its dark beak is light.
Now, maybe we can help others identify the puffins, a few auks and we’ve learned something new.
OK! Now you have an assignment—do a google image search and identify the Auks. =) Write (in the form below) and tell me what you learned or thought.
References
Podulka, Sandy, Ronald W. Rohrbaugh, Jr., and Rick Bonney, Editors. Handbook of Bird Biology. 2nd edition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 2004.
Another puffin game… Puffin Putt — you play 18 holes of online golf through manicured grass and sand–all as a cute little puffin. Its pretty fun. Here are some screenshots:
While graceful in the air and swimming, the puffin struggles with take-offs and landings, maybe that adds to the charm of their nickname, the Sea Clown. They often come crashing in while landing, and will even knock over other puffins in the way!
