TELL ME MORE!
• Puffins fly fast - up to 88km an hour.
They can flap their wings 400 times
a minute!
• On land they're not so fast and waddle
as they walk - a bit like a penguin.
• When they meet, puffins bump beaks. Awww!
• In winter they lose ('shed') the colourful parts
of their beak, so it's smaller and greyish.
• Their beaks have jagged edges so they
can carry their food as they fly back
to the nest.
• They love eating fish, especially sand eels.
Words: Debra Austin. Photos: Emma Jacobs/RSPCA, iStock, Shutterstock. Illustration: vecteezy.com
Bright, stripy beak? Orange legs? Black-and-white body?
Size of a small pigeon? It can only be the Atlantic puffin!
Each year as the weather warms up, these birds gather in huge
'colonies', on grassy cliff tops or small islands off the coast, to find
a mate and breed. The rest of the year they spend out at sea - they might
fly up to 1,500km over the winter! Then, when summer comes, they
arrive back at the same spot and sometimes even use the same nest.
Most puffins - around 10 million - live in Iceland. In the UK there are
about 1.1 million.
Puffins
ON THE WATER
• Puffins fly low over the water - it helps
them spot fish.
• They can dive up to 60m below the water
and stay under for up to a minute.
• They spend lots of time at sea, and rest by bobbing
about on the water.
• Their webbed feet act like a boat's rudder to help steer them.
• Their short wings are like oars and help them move about.
• When they want to take off again, they run across the surface
of the water.
PUFFIN FAMILIES
• Puffins lay one egg a year, which hatches
into a puffling.
• Dad digs out a burrow or finds a space in
the rock and lines it with twigs and grass.
• Mum and dad hatch the egg and feed their
baby together.
• In autumn, the puffling leaves the nest and
flies out to sea - for five years!
• They only come back
to land when
they're ready
to find a mate
and start their
own family.
CAN I SEE ONE?
• You have to make a big effort to see a puffin!
• From April to August you could book a special boat
trip to visit their homes.
• In Wales, there are lots on Skomer Island in
Pembrokeshire and Puffin Island, Anglesey.
• In England, there are around 100,000 on the Farne
Islands in Northumberland.
• You could also drive to the RSPB's nature reserve
at Bempton Cliffs, Yorkshire.
• You're unlikely to spot a puffin in the winter as
they're out at sea!
Puffling
14 animalaction.co.uk