Its diet consists of small fish, such as capelin, herring and hake. The puffin dives into the water and scoops up as many fish as it can, pinning the prey in its bill with backward-pointing spines on its tongue and the top of its mouth. The puffin can hold its breath for up to one minute underwater and can catch on average 10 fish per trip. It has been known to catch as many as 60 fish in one dive!
It also has trouble landing gracefully and often crashes and tumbles onto the sea or grass. The puffin comes to land to burrow and breed for four to five months a year. It normally keeps the same burrow and mate from year to year. The Atlantic puffin is found in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Sixty percent of the population breeds on islands off of the east coast of Newfoundland. Download a printable version of this page. View the discussion thread. The RCGS acknowledges that its offices are located on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Peoples, who have been guardians of, and in relationship with, these lands for thousands of years.
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All about Energy. An aggressive encounter between two puffins often begins by gaping. This involves a puffin puffing up their body to look bigger and opening their wings and beak slightly. The wider the beak is opened the more upset the puffin. The puffin may also stomp its foot in place to show its displeasure. The bright colors of the feet and beak help illustrate these motions. If the aggressive encounter escalates into a full-scale brawl the puffins will lock beaks.
They will then attempt to topple each other in a wrestling match by using their feet and wings in a flurry of action. A fight may gather a crowd of 10 or more puffin spectators. The combatants may become so involved in the fight they end up rolling off their rocky perch. A puffin also communicates information in its manner of walking. The puffins that are guarding burrows usually assume a pelican walk position that has the puffin stand stiffly erect with its beak next to its body and using slow exaggerated foot movements.
This makes the puffin look like a soldier on guard duty, which is just what it is doing by guarding the burrow. After a puffin lands it will assume a post-landing position.
This is a site ownership display that serves as a mild threat to nearby puffins. This position consists of landing with one foot in front of the other foot, with wings outspread and head angled down. This is a sign of non-hostility that relieves tension when landing in a group of puffins. This permits large numbers of puffins to congregate together, which has important social and predator defense benefits. Puffins make loud growling calls usually from underground which sounds like a muffled chainsaw.
The chicks "peep" for food from parents. Choose a call from the list below to hear what a Puffin sounds like. Puffin's Growling Call. Puffin Chick Begging for Food.
Puffins breed in colonies from April to August and over-winter from August to early spring on the open ocean far from land. Puffins tend to disperse widely during this time and as a result it is difficult for scientists to learn about this aspect of their life.
Puffins are wonderfully adapted to spend months at sea. They have waterproofed feathers, the ability to drink salt water and catch food. Puffin chicks leave a colony when they fledge and head off to the ocean without their parents. They remain in the open ocean until they are years old. Then they return to the vicinity of the colony where they hatched and may nest near the burrow where they hatched.
Scientists are unsure how puffins find their way home and are still learning how birds migrate. The puffins may make a mental map of their birthplace and use this to return later. We still have much to learn from the migrations of seabirds.
The greatest natural predator of the puffin is the Great Black-backed Gull. This gull can catch adult puffins in mid-air. The Great Black-backed Gull will circle high above a puffin colony and pick out a solitary puffin and catch it from behind by dive bombing the unwary puffin.
Herring gulls often wait for puffins returning from sea with a beakload of fish, pursue them and steal the fish. They also will pull puffin eggs or chicks from their nest. Puffins avoid cleptoparasites by dashing for the safety of the burrow entrance to deliver fish and to avoid gulls. Puffins often circle past their burrow a dozen times or more waiting for a chance to safely deliver food.
Predators of puffins depend on the puffins as food to feed their own young. Although the sight of gulls eating a puffin is not pleasant, predation at large colonies does not hurt the puffin colony because the majority of the puffins survive.
Humans have had a very negative effect on puffins in the past. Today, there are threats on land and at sea. For example, over-fishing has caused a disaster for the colony on Rost Island in Norway. In recent years puffin parents have not caught enough fish to feed their chicks.
Thousands of chicks have starved. This happened because people drastically depleted the herring stocks. Over-hunting occurs when too many individuals of a particular species are killed and the remaining population is unable to replace losses. Over-hunting puffins for food and feathers caused the loss of puffins from several colonies in Maine such as Eastern Egg Rock. Mammals such as fox and rats introduced by humans, can be very destructive because the puffins do not have adaptations to avoid them.
Puffins choose isolated islands to breed because there are no large predators on the ground to disturb their nesting. If humans introduce mammal predators to these islands, the puffins are very vulnerable and may no longer be able to use that island for breeding. Also, they become sick when they swallow oil while attempting to clean their feathers. Chemicals from farming that flow from farm to river to ocean can also make puffins sick.
Uncontrolled tourism can be harmful to puffin colonies because they need solitude to breed. People who get too close may scare off parents from their duties of feeding their chick. As long as tourists stay on boats at a safe distance and do not disturb the puffins, they can easily enjoy watching a colony during the nesting season. While humans have hurt puffin numbers in the past, we also have the ability to restore and protect colonies.
A Puffin can flap its wings up to times, which is actually so fast that it appears as a blur to the viewer. With this wing speed, it is no surprise the Atlantic Puffin can attain speeds approaching 55 miles per hour. A Puffin can actually carry up to 62 fish in its beak.
Image source: Courier Mail, Australia. Although Puffins are not an endangered species, they are threatened by human activity. In many places Puffin population has dropped due to overhunting, overfishing in areas where puffins catch fish, and over tourism in areas where puffins need solitude to breed. In the following video some puffins dive off of ledges into the water and vigorously flap through the water. Lorena Barba posted on November 4, at pm.
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