Card #052 · Birds
Atlantic puffin
Fratercula arctica
Rare VU · Vulnerable
Field notes
- Classification
- Order Charadriiformes · Family Alcidae
- Range
- North Atlantic coasts & islands
- Size
- 28–30 cm (11–12 in)
- Weight
- ~400–650 g (0.9–1.4 lb)
- Lifespan
- ~20+ yrs
- Diet
- Fish
Most Notable
Its bill doubles as a fishing basket: backward-pointing spines on its tongue and palate pin small fish crosswise so it can keep catching more, and carry a dozen or more home to its burrow at once.
The bright bill is a seasonal costume. Each spring the puffin grows the colorful outer plates that earn it the nickname "sea parrot," then sheds them after breeding and spends the winter far out at sea with a smaller, duller grey beak.
It nests in burrows dug into grassy sea cliffs and island turf, often returning to the same burrow and the same mate year after year.
Puffins spend most of their lives on the open North Atlantic, coming ashore only to breed; a young puffin may not touch land again for several years after it first leaves the burrow.
Once counted in the millions, the Atlantic puffin is now Vulnerable, its numbers falling as warming seas and overfishing thin the small fish it depends on.
Range: Coasts and open waters of the North Atlantic.