Audubon Flag, Atlantic Puffin

And yet another great photograph from victorcerutti on flickr.

This puffin is scooping down. Colorful beak. The clown of the sea swimming about finding food. Great action image capture.

Another fantastic photo by victorcerutti on flickr. Poetry in motion. This is a puffin landing…they are pretty fast and this photographer captured the motion very well.

What a great photo. It shows the bill after mating season when it is not as colorful and it shows the puffin when it is wet. A very natural and wonderful photograph.

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.

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.