Atlantic Puffin

Identification

In summer the Atlantic Puffin is unmistakable: a stocky black-and-white auk with a parrot-like bill banded in orange, yellow and blue-grey, a pale grey face patch, and a black line running back from the eye. What many people do not realise is that the bright bill is temporary — after breeding the outer plates are shed, leaving a smaller, duller bill and a darker face through winter. Juveniles resemble winter adults but have a thinner bill. On land puffins waddle upright and look comical; on the water they sit low and buoyant, and in flight their small, fast-whirring wings blur like a bee's.

Puffins are pursuit divers. They 'fly' underwater with rapid wingbeats, steering with their feet, and can stay down for around thirty seconds while chasing sand eels and small fish. The bill's serrated edges and a spiny tongue let a bird hold a row of fish crosswise while still catching more — a ten-fish beakful is not unusual. They nest in burrows dug into grassy cliff tops, often taking over an old rabbit hole, and raise a single chick, the 'puffling', on fish brought back at dusk to avoid gulls. Puffins are long-lived and slow to mature, not breeding until about five years old.

Puffin colonies are a late-spring spectacle: the birds arrive from the open Atlantic in April and have mostly gone by mid-August, so timing a visit matters. Britain and Ireland hold some of the largest colonies — Skomer, the Farne Islands, Lunga — while Iceland and Norway host millions of pairs. Afternoon and evening are best, when birds raft offshore before coming in to their burrows. Watch from the path above the colony: puffins tolerate quiet observers but panic at close approach, and a flushed bird may drop the fish it was carrying.